The Cousins Cornucopia

As described in the modern, illustrated history of the New Zealand Chalons, Chalon’s portrait of the young Victoria was engraved by Samuel Cousins in order for portrait-sized prints to be made. Let us now peer into the history of Cousins' work.

[Mottram1895, p158] is quite specific when he writes “A very fine mezzotint was produced of … [Chalon’s] portrait by the late Samuel Cousins, R.A., and published May 1^st, 1839, by Alderman F.G. Moon, by Special Appointment Publisher in Ordinary to Her Majesty [Victoria]”. This sentence stands alone in the text: that is neither in this sentence, nor in the ones before or after it, does Mottram state that the mezzotint portrait engraving specifically inspired the engraving work for the New Zealand Chalons.

Cousins’ engraving had some level of official status, hence the involvement of the Publisher in Ordinary to Her Majesty. Cousins was fortunate enough to be invited to a sitting with the young Queen to refine his engraving [Whitman04, p105] when, perhaps because the Chalon oil painting inevitably lacked the detail needed for an engraving [Smith91, p5], or perhaps for royal oversight.

The next reference [Melville16, p64] refers to “the mezzotint of … [the Chalon] portrait, by Samuel Cousins, R.A.” but omits any reference to Cousins at [Melville16, p68] where it says “He [Humphrys] engraved the reproduction of the portrait by Chalon (q.v.) for the first stamps of New Zealand …”

[TPSoNZ38v1] refers to Cousins not at all.

Our mystery beings in 1955 when Robson Lowe [Lowe55, p343] referred to an 1838 engraving, namely “In 1838 Samuel Cousins made a fine steel engraving, …” Furthermore, engraving a mezzotint is easier when the plate comprises a softer metal such as copper, whereas other techniques are preferred for the harder steel plates, such as stipple, so Lowe’s language hints that the mezzotint characterization was controversial also.

[TPSoNZ64v4, p2] echoes [Lowe55]’s date and reports that “In 1838, Samuel Cousins made an engraving copied from one of the Chalon paintings. One copy of this beautiful engraving hangs in the stairway at the Tauranga Public Library.”

This is no longer the case. The engraving has not been on display at Tauranga Library since before at least 2000, nor even listed in a recent inventory of the Civic Art Collection [TaurangaAskALibrarian]. The current location of the engraving seems to be unknown and perhaps even unknowable. Still, one wonders if the engraving was: ·         Put into storage, subsequently mislaid, yet still discoverable. Certainly all or portions of the Tauranga library and the associated archives have moved sites many times since 1964: likely in October 1964 (since it seems likely that the text of [TPSoNZ64v4] was completed before this date) and then again in 1970, 1974, 1976, 1987, 1988 and 1989 [TaurangaLibHist]. ·         Accidentally destroyed, or irredeemably damaged then “put out of its misery”. Indeed there was a fire in 1976, a major leak in 1984, another leak in 1987, ongoing rainy-day leaks during 1989-2007, and damage from Treaty of Waitangi-related protests in 1988 [TaurangaLibHist] ·         Sold off as surplus to a philatelist (or royalist) ·         Purloined

These apparent inconsistencies seem to be delightfully resolved by [Smith91, p5]. There was not one Cousins print, nor two, but four different prints. “Two different versions of the portrait were produced, and each was published in two conditions, initially as an etching with some mezzotint shading, and finally as a mixed stipple and line engraving. The first version was about 75 cm by 50 cm (the same size as the extant [Portuguese Chalon] copy and presumably the same size as the original painting) and was published in February and June 1838: the second version, smaller at 60 cm by 40 cm, was published in October 1838 and May 1839. All were published by Francis Graham Moon of Threadneedle Street, and the printers were Dixon and Ross …”

It is worthwhile noting that the tradition of the day was for the engraver to inscribe the publishing date on the plate before making prints from it. However, for engraving, this need not be the end of the creative process. If the engraver sees some further opportunity for improvement, there is nothing to stop him refining his engraving, updating the date, then printing off additional copies. Each evolutionary dated plate is called a state (or condition) of the plate.

Smith never explicitly matches up his versions and conditions with his dates, but does indicate that his reference was the British Museum. From the meta-data at the British Museum website, the four prints were:

·         Feby 1, 1838: larger version, characterized as: mixed, mezzotint, etching (and subsequently hand-coloured)

·         June 28, 1838: larger version, characterized as: mixed, mezzotint, etching (and subsequently hand-coloured)

·         Octr 1, 1838: smaller version, characterized as: mixed, etching

·         May 1, 1939: smaller version, characterized as: mixed, mezzotint, etching

The first and last of these are illustrated here.

The much earlier reference [Whitman04, p105] reports the existence of the last three versions and states only, and characterizes the October 1, 1838 plate as a preliminary etching only.

The version and state printed on June 28, 1838 has particular importance since it was released to coincide with the date of the Queen's coronation.

But we don’t stop at just four different plates! Two more states, and a later printing of a known state, are held in the Government Art Collection:  

·         June 28, 1838 again but reproduced in 1897: larger version, characterized as: mezzotint

·         June 26, 1838 (which looks to be a genuine date since the “6” does not look like a faded “8”) : larger version, characterized as: stipple

·         15 February 1853: smaller version, characterised as: engraving

This author is somewhat bemused by the characterizations of the engravings since it seems unlikely that a plate could change from stipple to mezzotint in the two days, over June 26 to 28, 1838, then acquire etching later on that very same day.

Engraving on steel plates is an arduous task, and it was common for the engravers to select and apply the best method (most artistically appropriate and/or streamlined method) for each portion of the artwork. Hence most steel engravings are labelled mixed. In this light, the British Museum’s characterizations seem more internally consistent, particularly if we accept [Whitman04, p105]’s characterization that the October 1, 1838 plate was a preliminary etching only. If so, there is reasonable agreement with the versions and conditions described at [Smith91, p5].

Returning to the mystery: which of these seven prints were used as the reference drawing by the engraver when creating the Chalon vignette? Two of these prints are after 1846 and may be immediately eliminated. One of the 1838 prints was a preliminary version only. This leaves one of the three non-preliminary 1838 engravings, following [Lowe55, p343] or the single 1839 engraving, following [Mottram1895, p158]. Mottram was closest in time to the events and he might have been informed by oral history, but a) even so, his reporting was nearly 50 years later, b) his reference to Corbould in the same section leads to caution on nearby comments, c) Mottram never actually claims that the cited portrait engraving was the stamp engraver’s reference anyway, and d) he might have included the reference to the May 1839 engraving merely because that was the version handy to him. So this line of inquiry seems to be inconclusive.

[Lowe55, p345] speculates that “… the New York engravers followed the Cousins engraving … It is not known for certain what … [the Perkins, Bacon & Co. stamp engraver] used for a model, but it is quite likely that he took the same subject [i.e. ‘the Cousins engraving’]”. This doesn’t help us either since it leaves unspecified which particular Cousins engraving was used.

Meanwhile [Smith91, p5] points out that there were other portraits and engravings, such as the Wagstaff engraving of mixed stipple and line engraving. It is now possible to propose that the stamp engraver’s reference was other than a Cousins engraving!

On the other hand, [Smith91, p8] proposes a promising avenue of inquiry: he identifies an exceedingly tight geometric correspondence between the Cousins engraving and the engraver’s second Chalon head, used first for the Van Diemen’s Land die, and nominates Cousins’ work as the stamp engraver’s source. The specific Cousins version used for this testing is not reported however. This author shall use a related technique below. 

[Dickson2000, p5 and p6] does see a difference among the extant Cousins engravings, and allows the Wagstaff engraving too, but does not further speculate on which version that the Perkins, Bacon & Co. stamp engraver used as his source.

As an aside, [Dickson2000, p5] notes the use of “Cousins’ head” in [Smith91, p5] but indicates he is unable to locate such a work. It is this author’s reading of [Smith91, p5] that Smith is talking of that portion, comprising the Queen’s head only, of one or other of the four Cousins’ engravings in the British Museum: i.e. not a new work, but a cropping of the already known works.

First Attempt at Solving the Mystery (Unsuccessful) 

Inspired by [Smith91, p8]’s comparative studies of portrait and stamp engravings, this author was initially hopeful that a close inspection of the black inserts in the ermine trim (of the ermine’s black winter tail) would show enough entropy among the Cousins and Wagstaff prints that it would be possible to objectively identify which portrait engraving was used as the reference for the stamp engraver. However, having inspected high resolution images of the three Cousins engravings in the Government Art Collection and of the Wagstaff engraving, the first attempt ended in failure since it is clear that they all reproduce the Chalon portrait very precisely in this regard, and there is little to pick between them. Worse, the stamp engraving departs from these references in several marked ways, likely due to the difference in form factor and the exigencies of line engraving.

The following compares the three portrait engravings with Humphrys' first Chalon bank-note engraving. The key to the concatenated images is shown below:

Cousins' larger print of  June 28, 1838 (reproduced 1897) © Government Art Collection

Cousins' smaller print of May 1 1839 © The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence

Wagstaff's print © Royal Collection Trust

Humphrys' first Chalon bank-note engraving [Humphrys184x].  Credit: The Library Company of Philadelphia

The copyrighted images below are either licensed or their use is believed to be allowed because the purpose is research, the source works are published, the copies were obtained fairly, there is no competitive motive, and a minimal fraction of each work is reproduced.

Comparison of faces. Setting to one side the high degree of consistency, it can still be said that the engraved eyes are distinctly larger and directed more upwards.

Comparison of ermine trim (left side when facing the portrait). The smaller black marks at the bend in the fabric midway down (aligned with the Queen's elbow) in the three left-hand-side portraits are simplified in the rightmost engraving, and the ones immediately above are regularized in size. 

Comparison of ermine trim (right side when facing the portrait). The trim at the top appears in both Cousins' and Wagstaff's image as a row of three larger and three smaller black marks. However in the rightmost engraving, the top row comprises just four similarly sized black marks.
Similar variations exist in the vertical trim: for example the spacing of the upper four changes from two separated pairs in the portrait engravings to four uniformly spaced marks in the stamp engraving.

We see that there are more differences between the stamp engraving and portrait engravings than among the portrait engravings.

Second Attempt at Solving the Mystery (Inconclusive) 

Letter from Humphrys to an unknown third person, referencing both a proof and Cousins

There is an extant letter (above), signed by Will Humphrys, addressed from 8 Frith St. (This address is just a block or so from the family-owned music shop of Novello’s at 69 Dean St. The Novello family would host Humphrys in their Genoa villa in his waning years). The letter, dated Monday 5th Febr, says “Dear Sir, Mr. Cousins has promised to spend tomorrow evening with me when I hope to have the pleasure of seeing you [exactly whom is unspecified] - I shall have a proof to show you. Yours very truly Will Humphrys”.

There is no year but this combination of day and date only occurs in 1827, 1838,1844,  1849 and 1855.

The following table speculates on the circumstances under which Humphrys would have a proof of interest to Cousins, which proof it might be, and the (unnamed) addressee of the invitation. The gray text indicates that the hypothesised meeting seems less likely (due to uncertain chronology, an overlong lag between the meeting and when the engraving was published, and/or the tie-in with Cousins is weak or unknown).

Date	Early state of a proof (“seeking opportunities for improvement”)	Mature state of a proof (“sharing the achievement”)	Proof after a hypothetical embargo (given that Perkins-Bacon & Co. were security printers)
1827	Master Lambton, after Thomas Lawrence (unclear when Humphrys engraved this and it might well be much later than 1827); Cousins engraved the same portrait in 1826 but created an opening for other engravers such as Humphrys by refusing Lawrence’s offer to work exclusively for Lawrence. Addressee could be Lawrence.
1838	Master Lock after Thomas Lawrence (published in October 1839, in the serial Engravings from the Choicest Works of Sir Thomas Lawrence published by Hodgson Boys & Graves [Lawrence1846]; Cousins contributed five engravings and Wagstaff four engravings to the same serial). Addressee could be Lawrence, Hodgson, Boys, Graves or a delegate, or another frequent  engraver in the series such as Wagstaff.
1844	Sir Walter Scott Bart. after Thomas Lawrence (published in June 1844, in the same serial [Lawrence1846], now published by H. Graves & Co. Addressee could be Lawrence, Graves or a delegate, or another frequent engraver in the series such as McInnes, Jackson, or Wagstaff.
1849	The Coquette, after Joshua Reynolds (published 1849); in his early career Cousins also engraved many plates after Reynolds. Addressee is unclear.		Three-quarter engraving after Cousins after Chalon used for a Province of Nova Scotia bank-note (issued 5 January 1848). Addressee could be Charles Wagstaff.
	A half-length engraving after Chalon ultimately used for the Union Bank of Australia bank-notes (1849 is possible in the sense that our current state of knowledge does not exclude any date between 1846 and 1853); Cousins’ smaller 1839 engraving after Chalon was Humphrys’ likely reference. Addressee could be Charles Wagstaff.
1855	New South Wales’ Queen Victoria New Design stamps, 1d, 2d and 3d (on 2 March 1855, Humphrys engraved “a head of the Queen For New South Wales Postage Stamp” [PBR53, p756]; issued 7 January 1856); no evident tie-in with Cousins. Addressee is unclear.	Van Diemen’s Land Chalon stamps, 1d, 2d and 4d (1d die ready on 10 June 1854, then the 2d and 4d on 12 September, then “finishing Van Diemen’s Land Postage one penny” on 26 February 1855) [PBR53, p765]; in addition to the Corbould miniature, Cousins’ smaller engraving after Chalon of 1839 was Humphrys’ likely reference. Addressee could be Corbould.	New Zealand Chalon stamps, 1d, 2d and 1/- (plates sent to colony 23 September 1854); Cousins’ smaller engraving after Chalon of 1839 was Humphrys’ likely reference. Addressee could be Charles Wagstaff.
		Humphrys re-touch of the Penny Black; no evident tie-in with Cousins. Addressee is unclear.

Given that the meeting between the three related to an engraving and apparently occurred after working hours, this author infers that Cousins and Humphrys had a relationship based on their mutual professional interest in engraving, and that the relationship went somewhat deeper than that needed by strict professionalism; although there is insufficient evidence in the letter to go so far as to call it friendship.

This level of professional engagement between Cousins and Humphrys, either leading up to Humphrys’ engraving of the Chalon portrait or afterwards, hints that Humphrys would have had, or did have, access to Cousins’ work and then might reflexively select it.

However, ultimately the letter is inconclusive:

·         It cannot be ruled out that the addressee of the letter was actually Charles Wagstaff, and certainly we can speculate that there were professional interactions between Humphrys and Wagstaff too, so it seems most likely that there was an engraving-related relationship between Humphrys and both portrait engravers

·         Although this letter cites Cousins only and so, by the thin logic of Occam’s razor, we might accept the historical tradition that Humphrys' used a Cousins' engraving, still the letter does not help us narrow down the list of Cousins engravings to just one.

Third Attempt at Solving the Mystery (Success!)

But wait. There are other details in the engravings, and further study identified some distinctive differences. The key to the concatenated images is unchanged but is replicated below:

Cousins' larger print of  June 28, 1838 (reproduced 1897) © Government Art Collection

Cousins' smaller print of May 1 1839 © The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence

Wagstaff's print © Royal Collection Trust

Humphrys' first Chalon bank-note engraving [Humphrys184x].  Credit: The Library Company of Philadelphia

The copyrighted images below are either licensed or their use is believed to be allowed because the purpose is research, the source works are published, the copies were obtained fairly, there is no competitive motive, and a minimal fraction of each work is reproduced.

Comparison of bulge in ermine border over the Queen's right shoulder (on the left side when looking at the image)

The ermine border over the Queen's right shoulder shows a very gentle bulge on the upper side in the Wagstaff engraving , a gentle (albeit indistinct) bulge in the May 28, 1838 (larger) Cousins engraving, yet a quite marked bulge in both the May 1, 1839 (smaller) Cousins engraving and in Humphrys' first Chalon engraving. Since a marked bulge in a cape border is not particularly aesthetic or commonplace feature, it seems unlikely that Humphrys would invent it without a specific reference, which points to the May 1, 1839 (smaller) engraving as his source (just as Mottram reported in [Mottram1895, p158]).

Comparison of underside shading on the ermine border over the Queen's right shoulder (on the left side when looking at the image)

That same ermine border over the Queen's right shoulder shows underside shading at the upper end in the Wagstaff engraving and little shading down and to the right, almost no shading anywhere in the May 28, 1838 (larger) Cousins engraving, yet both the May 1, 1839 (smaller) Cousins engraving and Humphrys' first Chalon engraving show marked underside shading along the whole length of this ermine border. This seems to confirm that Humphrys indeed used the May 1, 1839 engraving as his source. 

Summary
To summarise, there is a contemporaneous letter indicating that Cousins and Humphrys had some level of an engraving-related relationship outside of work hours, and thus there is circumstantial evidence that Humphrys is more likely to have used an engraving by Cousins rather than by another engraver. 

More compellingly, we can even identify which Cousins version among the five engravings over 1838-1839 was Humphrys' reference: based on a bulge in the ermine border over the Queen's right shoulder and its shading detail, we can posit with some reasonable confidence that it was the later, smaller engraving by Cousins.

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