sold well to the local Company market as well as back in Britain, where they were sometimes produced
in luxury editions or exhibited in London. The local customs and sights captured by Zoffany included tiger
hunts, a Hindu widow’s suicide at her husband’s funeral pyre (the practice of sati), public washing in
rivers, temples and monuments. Although artists from west and east had a shared interest in many
subjects, stylistic crossfertilization remained relatively rare, each set of artists remaining faithful to
their own cultural traditions. Empire, with its hierarchies of ruling and subject peoples, did not provide
the conditions necessary for the kind of crosscultural assimilations we now associate with modernity.
The Print Market
The production and purchasing of prints contributed greatly to the growth of the art market in the
eighteenth century. Tim Clayton has traced this development in detail (Clayton, 1997). He has shown how
English printmakers and sellers competed throughout the eighteenth century with France, which had led in
this field. The sale of foreignproduced prints largely of antique, Renaissance or seventeenthcentury
and eighteenthcentury canonical French and Italian paintings (e.g. by Poussin, Le Brun, Mignard, Coypel
and Canaletto) remained common in Britain (Clayton, 1997, 123–125). There was, however, an
increasing demand for English subjects and designs, especially as the Royal Academy established an
“English School” of art (Clayton, 1997, xi–xiv, 261–282). The American colonies, India and many parts
of continental Europe developed, by the end of the century, a taste for English prints. Prints formed part of
the growing luxury trade, both as objects in their own right and as illustrations (e.g. in catalogues) of
luxury goods.
Prints of works by celebrated artists such as Hogarth were successful on an international scale. He helped
to make the sale of prints more lucrative for engravers, by working to achieve the 1735 engravers’
copyright act. This ensured that no unauthorized persons were allowed to make copies of prints for 14
years after the publication of the original, thus reducing widespread piracy in the trade (Webster, 1979,
11). The act was strengthened in 1767 (Clayton, 1997, xiv). Some piracy continued in practice, however,
and affected designs by James Gillray (1757–1815) at the end of the century (Donald, 1996, 4). Hogarth
sometimes found it difficult to sell the original paintings on which many of his prints were based, but
many of his other prints were designed exclusively as prints. Sales of his print series, for example, his
Rake’s Progress, Harlot’s Progress and his The Four Times of Day, made him a great deal of money
(Figure 5.3).
Many buyers across Europe saw prints as a much cheaper alternative to paintings or sculptures (Smentek,
2007, 221). There were, however, limits to the accessibility of prints for the majority of London’s
working population. Masters might purchase prints, such as those from the series Industry and Idleness,
for the edification of their apprentices: there are records that they bought prints from the series as
Christmas gifts for them (Riding, 2006e, 181), and some established artisans could afford to buy prints for
their own homes. However, many from the laboring classes could view prints only in shop windows,
barbershops, workshops or public houses; or they might occasionally purchase lowcost copies,
including woodcuts, which involved a cheaper mode of production (Donald, 1996, 7, 31; Riding, 2006e,
181). The French dealer FrançoisCharles Joullain fils (died 1790) stated in 1786 that “Prints level the
inequality of fortunes by satisfying amateurs of all ranks” (from Reflexions on Painting and Engraving
Accompanied by a Short Essay on Trade in Curiosities and Sales in general, 1786, cited in and
translated by Smentek, 2007, 221). Prior to the Revolution, print shops in Paris attracted a very mixed
clientele, from nobles (who bought the most expensive wares), to members of the third estate, who formed
the majority of customers: artists, printmakers, lay clergy, tax inspectors, lawyers, notaries’ clerks, actors,
wigmakers, stationers, dyers, miniaturists, bakers and others. The availability of credit broadened the