The Calydonian Boar Hunt, from the Houghton Gallery

Richard Earlom engraved several reproductive prints of paintings for an album celebrating Sir Robert Walpole’s art collection. As this dark, velvety proof impression demonstrates, Earlom’s self-taught mezzotint skills were particularly suited to translating the painterly qualities of Peter Paul Rubens’s art. Philip IV of Spain commissioned the mythological hunting scene on which this work is based as part of a series made by Rubens in 1639. The original painting was lost in 1734, while Walpole’s canvas, a copy in reverse, later entered the collection of Catherine the Great.