Charles Spooner after Jeremiah Meyer.

George the Third, King of Great Britain &c &c &c .

18½ x 24½ inches

A crisp, half-length, mezzotint engraving by Charles Spooner after the portrait by Jeremiah Meyer, published in London circa 1760.

This striking profile of the newly crowned George III, facing to the left and wearing the royal insignia, was one of the many impressions taken at the beginning of the king's reign that would have been distributed far and wide across the land, thereby disseminating an image of the new monarch to his subjects. Little did we know in 1760 what a long and prosperous reign the king would have or how he would come to define the Georgian era. The art of mezzotint engraving, imported from Germany in the C17th, was to reach its zenith in England in the second half of the C18th. Until the advent of photography, it remained the most popular and accurate way of portraying one's image to a wider audience.

£1800