Description
Autograph Letter Signed ‘A.Roffe’, sending impressions of his correspondent’s portrait, discussing the declining trade in engravings. 2 pp. 8 x 5 inches, fine. 52 Clarendon Street, Somers Town, undated. Alfred Thomas Roffe (1803-1871), engraver, from one of the two Roffe families of engravers in the nineteenth century. “The Engraving, altho’ finished a considerable time, is not published, owing to the circumstance of there being no sort of demand for Portraits of professional men, however distinguished, excepting the lithographic, slight drawings which occasionally appear. The consequence of this is, that the Portrait in question which I valued at twenty pounds, will not now produce the third of that sum, altho’ I would have disposed of it, even at that rate, rather than it should remain in my hands.”