John Nixon | Album of twelve watercolours illustrating Tristram Shandy, 1786

John Nixon

Watercolours illustrating "Tristram Shandy", 1786

Set of twelve illustrations, each approximately 185 x 95mm., pen and grey ink and watercolour, signed and dated by the artist ("John Nixon fecit 1786"), margins inscribed with chapter numbers and extensive quotations from illustrated passages, window mounted in modern brown calf album, light annotations to mounts (mostly in pencil), small tear to corner of one mount (not affecting illustration) 

At the time of their exhibition at the Royal Academy in 1786, Nixon’s drawings for Sterne’s great comic novel were innovative for fusing together “diverse traditions”. Then, the tradition of caricature was based around a “group of printsellers […] quite independent from that of the booksellers, usually employing a quite separate group of artists” (McKitterick). Hence, these drawings mark a transitional moment in the history of English book illustration.

Scholars have foregrounded the rich visual qualities of Tristram Shandy, namely the novel’s tableaux-like scenes, its references to artists and aesthetic debates of the day, and the visual basis of Sterne’s wit (Mullan). Sterne’s status as the “most illustrated novelist of the eighteenth century” has also been highlighted (de Voogd). However, in the eighteenth century, only a handful of artists—amateur or professional—produced oil paintings, engravings, or drawings based on the text (McKitterick; Gordon).

In true Shandean style, the index for the Royal Academy exhibition catalogue mistakenly records the exhibitor of these drawings as “James Nixon, Associate”, which led to subsequent scholarly error. (William Sandby and Algernon Graves wrongly identify him as the miniaturist James Nixon, A.R.A.). However, the main body of the catalogue correctly lists “J. Nixon H.” (John Nixon, Honorary exhibitor).

The present illustrations correspond to passages from volume 1, chapters 30, 35, 51, volume 3, chapters 2, 7, 53, 61, 65, and volume 4, chapters 19 and 77. Two others correspond to volumes 2 and 4 (though the chapters are unspecified in the manuscript captions).

The year after their exhibition, three of these compositions made their way into print as engravings for The Beauties of Sterne (1787), the tenth edition, “enlarged and ornamented with plates from original drawings”. The illustrations for volume III, chapters 2 and 53 were included in the 1790 edition of Beauties, whilst other drawings represented here were used in collected editions of Sterne’s works.

LITERATURE:

The exhibition of the Royal Academy, MDCCLXXXVI, p. 16; David McKitterick, "Tristram Shandy in the Royal Academy", 1992 (principally on eleven surviving preparatory sketches for Nixon's watercolours); Peter de Voogd, "Sterne and visual culture", 2009; John Mullan, "The 'stuff' of Tristram Shandy", 2018; Catherine Gordon, "'More than one handle': the development of Sterne illustration 1760-1820", 1974.

PROVENANCE:

Christie's London, 14 July 1992, lot 1