15/07/2026
Before photography, there was mezzotint – and few commanded it like Richard Earlom.
These two exceptional engravings, dated 1771/2, are more than works on paper. They are eyewitness accounts of Georgian London at its most theatrical. Engraved by Earlom after the drawings of Charles Brandoin and published by Robert Sayer of Fleet Street, they capture two of the most talked-about interiors of their day: the Pantheon on Oxford Road and the exhibition of the Royal Academy of Painting at Pall Mall.
The Royal Academy itself describes this plate as the first known depiction of its annual exhibition – thought to be the earliest surviving image of any public art exhibition in Britain. The Great Room at Pall Mall in 1771, hung floor to ceiling with 276 paintings, at the very birth of the public exhibition.
The Pantheon, meanwhile, was a scandal in built form. Opened in January 1772 as a venue for masquerades and assemblies, it abandoned the closed-door exclusivity of the private club – at first, admission required the endorsement of a fashionable peeress, and society feared the mixing of ranks, genders and political affiliations that might follow. Earlom's plate records not just an interior, but a moment when the social order itself seemed to tremble.
Mezzotint was the medium made for such drama. Worked from dark to light across a roughened plate, it renders light, shadow and crowded silk with a velvet depth no line engraving could match. Impressions of these prints in the same state are held by the British Museum and the Yale Center for British Art.
Both are signed, lettered with the names of artist and publisher, and professionally framed to museum quality. Two rooms, two revolutions in how Georgian society saw itself – preserved in ink for over 250 years.
Offered as a pair. Enquiries by DM or through the link in our bio.
