The Curious Case of the Payne Print That Wasn't.

I recently came across an interesting little piece at the Big Bend Antique Mall in St. Louis, a place where I've had some good luck from time to time. It's catch as catch can at places like that--sometimes you hit it, and sometimes you don't. I prefer doing my hunting at antique shops and antique malls rather than going to dealers or specialists in maps and prints for a very simple reason: it's cheaper. Lots of times, the dealers at antique malls have no idea what they have, and are willing to let good pieces go for a song.

This cuts both ways. Sometimes, in their ignorance of what they have, they'll pass off a photoreproduction as the real thing, or as a lot more valuable than it is, and so you'll buy it, and only when you get home and look at your find under a magnifying glass, you realize you've got something that's worthless save as decorative. I've been rooked more than once. But I'm arrogant enough to think I'm smart enough to know the wheat from the chaff, so I don't see myself altering my buying habits any time soon.

At any rate, I found a set of six prints of views of German cities. I'm not generally a big fan of Germany or the Germans, but as they fit with my general collecting pattern--scenes of faraway places, views of cities, and scenes of ports and ships--I bought three of them and scuttled home to hit the Googles and see what I could find out.

The first was a view of the river Weser running through Bremen. Once I got it out of its frame, I saw that it was pretty beat up. At some point, it's going to need some restoration, a process about which I'll say more later on.

"Bremen" is uncredited on the print--there's no way to see who did it (it does have the name of the publisher--Kunstverlags in Schweinfurt, which I guess translates to "Art Publishers of Schweinfurt). Unlike the Brits and the Yanks, who apparently liked to have their names slathered across everything they did, German engravers seemed content to work anonymously. I have another German print, this one of Freiburg im Breisgau, which is similarly uncredited. Which is too bad, because I think the work on this little piece is splendid, and I'd like to know more about it.

The second was a scene of the waterfront of Bremerhaven. It was published in 1841, and while I haven't been able yet to find out much more about it, at least it did have the names of its creators on it. It was drawn by someone named Sander and engraved by an A.H. Payne. Sander and Payne apparently worked together--there are any number of views of German cities drawn by Sander and engraved by Payne out there. Here it is.

The third one, Wien--or Vienna--from the bastions, was also engraved by this same A.H. Payne.



Part of the fun of collecting and studying antique prints is learning the technical terminology. Like any other profession, art has its jargon, too.



The "SC" following Payne's name is an abbreviation of "Sculptor." In the context of the print world, "Sculptor" doesn't mean someone who works with clay or marble. It's how continental Europeans (including Germans) refer to the engraver (in the English-speaking world, the name of the engraver is often followed by "engr." "Del.", on the other hand, is an abbreviation of "delineator," or artist--the guy who drew or painted the original image).

"Payne" is not a German name, so that was interesting in and of itself. His Wikipedia entry is pretty abrupt, but it did tell me that Albert Henry Payne (1812-1902) was an Englishman who was born in London, but who moved to Germany in 1839 and spent the rest of his life in Leipzig. He may have spent the rest of his life in Germany, but unlike his German colleagues, Payne seemed to have wanted his name on his work.

But I wanted to know more--like, for example, the value--so I did a little more searching around on the Internet. Sometimes, the best thing to do is to type a few keywords into Google Images, which is what I did.

On a German print dealer's site, antique-prints.de, I thought I'd found it. It sure looked like the one I'd bought. The piece had been sold, and the price was not listed, so I struck out there. But there was something else interesting. According to the dealer, Payne had nothing to do with this. The dealer ascribed the drawing to W.H. Bartlett, and the engraving to an R. Wallis.



Now that was interesting. My "Wien auf die Bastei," or "Vienna from the Bastions," clearly stated that it was the work of A.H. Payne, but this dealer said otherwise. And while I can fault the Germans for other things, they tend to be sticklers for details. It was unlikely that this dealer--a reputable one--had made a mistake in attribution.

When I examined them closely, side by side, I realized that they were not the same print. Eerily similar though they were, there were, in fact, subtle differences. Here's a closeup of Bartlett and Wallis's Wien:

You'll notice that the differences are subtle, but there. They differ in the placement of the people, the composition of the trees, and the fact that you can see the edge of what looks like a palace in the right-hand side, a detail missing from the Payne piece.

Now, as it happens, I know who W.H. Bartlett was. In fact, I have two of his prints, which I'll talk about in a later post. William Henry Bartlett had more in common with Albert Henry Payne than a middle name. Bartlett was, like Payne, an Englishman, an illustrator and engraver, and an accomplished traveler. He visited the United States in the 1830's and did a series of sketches which were then engraved, printed, and published in book form by Geo. Virtue, a well-known British publisher, as American Scenery, or Land, Lake, and River: Illustrations of Transatlantic Nature. He was a contemporary of Payne's, but he didn't live nearly as long--he died in 1854.

Judging by his Wikipedia entry, he was also a better-regarded artist. He is described as "one of the foremost illustrators of topography of his generation," and has a much longer entry than Payne does. Most likely, he was more highly praised in his lifetime, as well (or perhaps he's just better known to Anglophone audiences, working as he did in England and the U.S., while Payne lived and worked in Germany).

The similarity of the two engravings was striking--so striking that I didn't see how it could be a coincidence. Was it a case of professional rivalry? Artists are famous for being jealous and competitive--were Payne and Bartlett competing to see who could do a better scene of Vienna from the Bastions?

Or is there another explanation?

Clearly, Payne was the engraver, but neither Sander nor any other artist, or "delineator," is named on the print, which could suggest he'd done both--but the pieces' similarity makes it seem probable that Payne copied Bartlett and Wallis, changing just enough of the details so that it didn't look like too slavish an imitation. Considering that Bartlett was the better-known artist, Payne may well have done so.

Or who knows? Perhaps it was pure coincidence. Perhaps both Payne and Bartlett happened to be in the same place and both thought that the view of Vienna from the bastions was worth capturing.

In any case, it's an interesting little mystery. I have not, as yet, been able to ascertain whether these engravings were part of a book or issued singly--finding that out might shed a little light on the curious case of these suspiciously similar views of Vienna. But I'll keep digging, and if I find anything out, I'll update this post.