Description
A long and well-written Autograph Letter Signed, to Mr. Egby, discussing the marvel of Phreno-Magnetic experiments (by Spencer Hall), art, sculptors such as Foley and Gibson, collectors, the Daguerrotype, Liverpool and London contrasted, mutual acquaintances, etc. 4 pp. 10 x 8 inches, in good condition, legible, remains of guard along one edge. Liverpool, 6 March 1843. Henry Clark Pidgeon (1807–1880), English painter in water-colours and antiquary. Some fifty works by Pidgeon were hung at the Liverpool Academy’s annual exhibitions. From 1838 he exhibited in London: four pictures at the Royal Academy, two at the British Institution, and 15 at the Suffolk Street Gallery. He showed some twenty works at the Royal Manchester Institution, between 1841 and 1856. He contributed papers and drawings to the journals of the Archæological Institute, the British Archæological Association, and the Liverpool Literary and Philosophical Society. To Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire’s publications he contributed etchings and lithographs. For the Great Exhibition of 1851, Pidgeon did an extensive series of illustrations for the Illustrated London News. “Do you remember before I left town reading to me the account in the Nottingham Paper of some Phreno-Magnetic experiments by a Mr. Spencer Hall. We are all here in a state combining the gaping and open eyedness of astonishment, the shrug of incredulity, the suppressed titter of ridicule, the upturned nose of contempt, and the resignation of belief when all the others fail to express our sentiments. We in our own persons, with our own eyes have seen the marvels …”