Knives, Scissors, and Razors to Grind, plate six from Cries of London (1795): Artwork and History

Knives, Scissors, and Razors to Grind, plate six from Cries of London (1795) is in the Art Institute of Chicago collection. The museum lists its creator attribution as Giovanni Vendramini (Italian, 1769-1839) after Francis Wheatley (English, 1747-1801) published by Colnaghi (English, 19th century).

The work and its context

The Art Institute of Chicago describes the work:

This engraving of everyday London life comes from a series of 14 paintings by the Royal Academy painter Francis Wheatley. This series of idealized knifegrinders and cherry, match, primrose, and strawberry sellers was also available in impressions with hand coloring. Wheatley, a portrait painter to the aristocracy, came upon hard times while preparing these canvases, but the dual-language print titles (English and French) attest to the wide-ranging appeal of the engravings.

Object facts

• Title: Knives, Scissors, and Razors to Grind, plate six from Cries of London
• Date: 1795
• Artist attribution: Giovanni Vendramini (Italian, 1769-1839) after Francis Wheatley (English, 1747-1801) published by Colnaghi (English, 19th century)
• Place of origin: Italy
• Medium: Stipple engraving in brown ink on cream laid paper
• Dimensions: Image: 36 × 28.3 cm (14 3/16 × 11 3/16 in.); Sheet, trimmed within platemark: 41.1 × 31.5 cm (16 3/16 × 12 7/16 in.)
• Type: Print
• Department: Prints and Drawings
• Reference number: 1932.1458

Collection credit

Gift of Mrs. Isaac K. Friedman

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The description above is credited to the Art Institute of Chicago and reused under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0; HTML formatting has been converted to plain text. Other catalogue metadata and the public-domain image are provided under CC0 1.0.