View in the Colosseum Regents Park Aquatint

London - Summer Fashions for 1836.

A large aquatint with bright contemporary hand-colouring, beautifully mounted, framed and glazed, ready for presentation, 435 x 590 mm. Published by Benjamin Read (London and Broad Way, New York), 1836.

A truly stunning print, in fine condition, which would enhance the appearance of any room.

Benjamin Read was a professional tailor and demonstrated savvy business acumen by creating high quality prints of his stock, enabling the effective promotion of his business. Read's Regency fashion prints were in essence a highly successful advertisement, and by setting his subjects in fashionable venues, in this case the Colosseum in Regent's Park, he was able to nurture the idea of an association between his tailoring and high society.

According to Ralph Hyde, Read was initially inspired by a yearly print created by George Cruikshank, demonstrating the greatest offences against fashion at the time. Read first commissioned George Cruikshank's brother, Robert Cruikshank, however by the date of this print in 1836, Cruikshank's name was no longer present on the prints.

Read produced one print for summer and one print for winter. As primarily a seller of menswear, Read did not feel it necessary to produce any more prints than this, with menswear not generally being subject to short term trend changes. Read's prints started a move by other tailors to produce their own prints, and he soon began to consult for these tailors, helping them enhance the final result of their own fashion prints. ('The Prints of Benjamin Read, Tailor and Printmaker' by Ralph Hyde & Valerie Cumming, Print Quarterly 17 (2000), pp.262–84.)

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