Mezzotint, Italian Peasant, engraved by David Lucas after Penny Williams, 1830.

Accepted in lieu of Inheritance Tax by H M Government from the estate of the Hon. Christopher Lennox-Boyd and allocated to the Victoria and Albert Museum 2015.

From the Lennox-Boyd collection, largely formed of mezzotints by David Lucas after John Constable, acquired in lieu of Inheritance Tax by H M Government from the estate of the Hon. Christopher Lennox-Boyd and allocated to the Victoria and Albert Museum in 2015. Lennox-Boyd formed the finest collection of British mezzotints in private hands anywhere, totalling approximately 50,000 prints. While his main focus was mezzotints, his collection also contained 18th century picture frames, antique women’s shoes, fans and printed handkerchiefs. He also collected printed ephemera, examples of which the museum has also acquired, and watercolours in the 1970s. In 1963 Lennox-Boyd bought Sanders of Oxford, on the High Street, transforming it from a bookshop into a premier seller of fine prints, maps, engravings and 20th-century etchings. He published several works including Theatre Prints in the Age of Garrick and George Stubbs: The Complete Engraved Works.

E.1198-2016