A framed set of Stothard’s monumental engravings of the Bayeux Tapestry, with fine contemporary hand-colouring. Each c. 550 x 380mm. All double-page plates, with the first sixteen reproducing the entire tapestry and the final double-page plate showing a detail of William receiving news of Harold’s movements.
 
An fine set of Stothard’s monumental edition of The Bayeux Tapestry. By the early 19th century, it had been acknowledged that the reproductions of the Bayeux Tapestry hitherto published had left a lot to be desired. Ducarel’s reproduction of the entire Tapestry in 1767 had relied on the plates published alongside Lancelot and Montfaucon’s work in 1729-33. When Hudson Gurney visited the Tapestry in 1814, he wrote that: “Nothing but a copy of this monument in colours can furnish an adequate representation of it... I trust I have said enough to prove how very insufficient the prints we have of it are, to convey any accurate idea of the Bayeux Tapestry; being in fact copies of copies.” And so it was very much necessary for the Society Of Antiquaries to have Charles Stothard make a new reproduction of the Bayeux Tapestry. Between 1816 and 1819 he made three trips to Bayeux, working it cold conditions to make accurate copies of the Tapestry, which had been coiled round a cylinder for centuries. He submitted his drawings to the Society in 1819, and they were entrusted to James Basire II for engraving. The first plate is dated June 1st 1819, but was not issued until June 1820. The remaining engravings were published between April 1822 and July 1823. The hand-colouring was done under the direction of George Martin, based on a set of impressions from the copper plates that Stothard himself had taken to France to colour. The resulting plates represent the finest reproductions of the Bayeux Tapestry made to that point, and probably the finest that were conceivable at that time. As late as 1943, Eric Maclagan, the Director of the V&A, considered them “in many ways he most adequate representation of the original.”