Prints and engravings abound in which boozy, randy, gouty old men appear as figures of fun, their grotesquely swollen feet carefully bandaged and propped up on gout-stools.Excellent as it is in many respects, "Gout" is disappointing in others.
"Engravings in Space," which made a good impression at its premiere two years ago, remains attractive for its clear and ever shifting shapes.
The young artist's task was to immortalize Dresden in paint and engravings in the manner in which his uncle had defined the international image of the Serenissima's capital for Grand Tourists from all over the Continent.
Obsessive to the last, a few months before his death he executed an engraving sardonically titled Tail-Piece, or The Bathos, in which he sombrely depicted the demise of his own artistic world.
After many difficulties, occasioned by the inexperience of a young director in putting through reforms, and a near-fatal accident in which he permanently impaired his voice when he swallowed some engraving acid, Weber was forced to resign.
The engraving is praised by Shakespeare's friend Ben Jonson in his poem To the Reader printed alongside it, in which he says that it is a good likeness of the poet.
The monument was preserved through incorporation into a convent (in which the English poet Lord Byron had a study) and influenced British Georgian and Regency architecture through the engravings of the Edinburgh artist "Athenian" Stuart.
All these themes recur in his engravings, which echo Hogarth's attention to moral themes.
The earliest works of these two young painters combined influences from Michelangelo and from northern Gothic engravings in a novel style, which departed from the tenets of High Renaissance art and was characterized by its highly charged emotionalism and departure from classicism.
