Cromek, Robert Hartley, and Cromek, Thomas Hartley.

R.H. Cromek (1770-1812) is best remembered for what was regarded as his double-dealing with William Blake. For an illustrated edition of Robert Blair's Grave in 1805 Cromek engaged Blake to produce designs, and acquired most of his 589 subscribers by exhibiting these designs in provincial towns, but then engaged Luigi Schiavonetti to produce the engravings instead, so that Blake only received 20 guineas for his work. The two men subsequently competed with each other after 1806 when Cromek engaged Thomas Stothard to paint The Pilgrimage to Canterbury and planned to produce by subscription an engraving by Schiavonetti, which, however, was delayed by the latter's death in 1810 and not completed (by others) until 1817. Blake, in the meantime, had exhibited his own Chaucer's Canterbury Pilgrims in 1809 and completed an engraving of it by 1810.



These episodes apart, Cromek was, in his short life, a highly active engraver, editor and publisher, whose notable publications included Reliques of Robert Burns (1808), Select Scottish Songs...by Robert Burns (1810), and Allan Cunningham's Remains of Nithsdale and Galloway Song (1810). As secretary of the Chalcographic Society, Cromek also had ambitious plans for producing engravings of British art by a Society for the Encouragement of the Art of Engraving – a scheme which Blake excoriated in his private notebook – but it came to nothing and both societies were dissolved in 1811.



His son Thomas Hartley Cromek (1809-1873) enjoyed a moderately successful career as a painter and draughtsman, especially during his period in Italy in the 1840s, specialising in views of Rome, Florence and Greece. He ceased painting by 1861 because of ill health and turned to writing in defence of his father.



The present collection comprises the following:

Condition of numbered volumes in catalogue description: 1) Extremities of binding worn, gutter split. Internally in good condition. 2) Covers and two-leaf index detached. Binding worn and lacking spine. Tears to most integral address leaves, with some crude repairs or guards (but largely with no loss to text). Some dust-staining, browning and offsetting throughout, but the letters are in reasonably good condition overall. 3) Lacking spine, covers detached and worn. Cunningham sketch spotted. Some dust-staining and browning throughout but in reasonably good condition overall. 4) "Extracts" volume lacking spine; "Recollections" with faded spine 5) Spotting to album leaves, but only occasional browning or spotting to tipped-in letters 6) Lacking spine, worn covers becoming detached 7) Binding worn, spine defective, covers detached 8) Minor creasing to covers and internally. Overall, only the bindings have suffered. Internally, most volumes are in good condition.
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1) The autograph manuscript of t.h. cromek's 'memorials of the life of r.h. cromek, engraver, f.a.s. edinburgh...With the unpublished correspondence on those works, And other papers relating to his professional and literary career. Collected and Edited by his Son', neatly written chiefly on rectos, with T.H. Cromek's pencil drawing of his father as frontispiece, the Preface dated from Wakefield, 23 December 1864, c.200 pages, gilt-edged, large quarto, half-morocco, worn at extremities, gutter split

an unpublished and highly informative biography of the author's father, r.h. cromek, based partly on an anonymous "Biographical Sketch" that appeared in 1813, partly on conversations with friends who knew him, and partly on largely unpublished documentation. The latter, copied or inserted here, includes R.H's robust letter to Blake ("a difficult man to deal with") refuting his allegations relating to the Robert Blair Grave affair and other grievances

...What public reputation you have, the reputation of eccentricity excepted, I have acquired for you, and I can honestly and conscientiously assert, that if you had laboured thro' life, for yourself, as zealously and as earnestly as I have done for you, your reputation as an artist...would have placed you on an eminence that would have put it out of the power of an individual as obscure as myself, either to add to it, or take from it...

other letters by R.H., to Thomas Bewick and others; letters by T.H. protesting against the misrepresentation of his father; letters by John Pie, Bewick, Cunningham, William Roscoe, and others; Schiavonetti's receipts for his work on The Pilgrimage to Canterbury; R.H.'s published  tribute to Schiavonetti; and a list of some fifty engravings by R.H.

2) An album of c.66 autograph letters signed, and other documents, to members of the Cromek family, by numerous correspondents, including R.H. Cromek (22), Benjamin West (about Mr Bird's "work of genius"), Roscoe, and Cunningham,  large 4to, half-morocco marbled boards, worn and largely detached

3) A further album of c.29 autograph letters signed, and other documents, by correspondents including Thomas Bewick (fine letter about the political situation in England, Europe and the United States, 1794), together with a pencil sketch by him of the author John Cunningham "Drawn two days before his death" and given to R.H. for engraving in 1808; R.H.'s letters to Bewick about this and Blair's Grave;  a draft in pencil by John Bewick, the wood engraver, about "the Invention"; several letters by William Bewick and John Bewick Jr; and a rebus letter,  large 4to, gilt-edged, roan, covers worn and detached 

4) Two autograph notebooks of T.H. Cromek, including his "Extracts from Arnold's Magazine...relating to the painting, and the engraving of 'The Canterbury Pilgrimage'" with his comments; extracts from Gilchrist's Life of William Blake with T.H.'s critical comments on "Many slanderous assertions" ("...here again, assertions are not proofs...", "...In defence of my father, I must, though unwillingly, relate my anecdote...",  etc.); copies of related letters; and "Recollections of conversations with Mr John Pye" [1782-1874, engraver and prominent engravers' advocate], with copies of letters (relating to Blake, etc.), 2 volumes,  c.180 pages, quarto, roan, 1863-4, spines worn and one defective  

5) Album containg "Letters, etc. from John Pye Esq. to T.H. Cromek. 1862-3", including 22 largely autograph letters signed by Pye, discussing engraving matters and his own condition, and  a small pencil sketch by Abraham Cooper, RA, large quarto, roan

6) An autograph notebook by T.H. Cromek, a formally drawn up "Introductory lessons in Hebrew Grammar", 62 pages, small quarto, roan with gilt lettering, dated  6 November 1851, worn, spine defective, gutter split and leaves detached

7) An autograph notebook by T.H. Cromek, in differing styles of hand, containing extensive extracts from works on subjects including the Scriptures, Hebrew characters, the Apocalypse ("from the Catholic version of the New Testament. Rheims. 1582"), a conversation between Edmund Burke and Dr Gibson in 1790, other religious tracts and histories, and Rubens and Velasquez, c.150 pages, foolscap, half-roan marbled boards, the first section to p. 75 dated 16 October 1851, worn, spine defective, covers detached

T.H. Cromek became a convert to Roman Catholicism in 1836.

8) A notebook in which is entered a formal list of some scores of T.H. Cromek's watercolours, with details of their titles/subjects, prices, and purchasers, from 31 December 1834 to December 1872, 61 pages, one loosely inserted, 8vo, roan

this is the major extant archive of the cromeks, father and son.