'The Portraiture of John Bunyan' Revisited: Robert White and Images of the Author

• Published in: Bunyan studies no. 13; p. 6
• Main Author: Dunan-Page, Anne
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Newcastle Upon Tyne Northumbria University, Department of Humanities, Faculty of Arts, Design and Social Sciences 01.01.2008
• Subjects: British & Irish literature; Brown, John; Bunyan, John (1628-1688); Bunyan, John (1628-88); English literature; Walpole, Horace (1717-1797)
• ISSN: 0954-0970

[...]we should acknowledge, with W. R. Owens, that Bunyan's fame as a divine never reached that of Owen in his lifetime, and perhaps dates only from the publication of his works in folio in 1692.40 The decision to choose Robert White as the engraver for the image in The Pilgrim 's Progress, but to make him depart from his traditional mode of engraving frontispieces, needs to be reassessed, by a careful examination of White's oeuvre and his reputation in the late 1670s. The following remarks are based on my examination of the drawings in the British Museum, but much more work on White needs to be undertaken by art historians before any definite conclusion can be drawn.53 Bunyan scholars have always assumed, due to a general similarity of traits, that the sketch of the author by Robert White was the direct model for the subsequent frontispieces of The Pilgrim's Progress and The Holy War, but there are reasons to believe this was not necessarily so. [...]the translation of a portrait into a print deserves much more consideration; it seems, for instance, that White was generally thought to be better than Loggan at drawing, but inferior to his master when it came to translating the drawings to plates.54 His engraved frontispieces were the lowest in a chain of descent from drawing to engravings to engraved frontispieces. The terminology ('drawing', 'miniature') is already slippery; there is no precise research available on the translation from graphites to plates and the way in which White intended to use his own drawings remains largely unknown. [...]few art historians can agree upon what constitutes a miniature as opposed to a drawing, and even on how a drawing should be defined. What you write of engraving a Plate from it, I take it to be but a Colourable Excuse ... Besides such plates are always engraven not from paynt but draughts in black and white, and those draughts might be truer taken from the life, then any Picture, and more Exactly and advantagiously done in holland, (there being better Artists) then in England.61 Later, Locke made fun of Stringer for such 'skilfull' knowledge of print making,62 but where did Stringer get his information about the appropriate models for engraved plates (and, supposedly, for his commendation of Dutch artists)?