Melton Prior Institut

Linton- Life in the Collections

Div.:

56) Proofs from Scribner's Monthly and St. Nicholas: A Portfolio of Proof Impressions Selected from Scribner's Monthly and St. Nicholas.

New York 1880

With this choice of engravings, art director Alexander Drake had followed the example of William Luson Thomas’ Graphic Portfolio. Scibner’s first proof portfolio includes examples of those engravings that became notorious for having stirred up the New School controversy, among them the famous Gillie-Boy reproduction by Timothy Cole and his engravings after Wyatt Eaton, which Linton had predominantly attacked. Two rather moderate engravings of the Old School fossil Linton, interpreting a landscape and a historical illustration by his disciple Mary Hallock stand against an amount of twenty-six engravings of his adversary Cole, which demonstrates the striking variety of his art. In the second series of the proof edition, which appeared in the following year, Linton’s work was completely absent. In the concluding Best of - compilation, Selected Proofs, which was also published in 1881, Linton is only represented with a very mediocre example of an old-fashioned facsimile style.