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Vincent Brooks, Day & Son was a major British lithographic firm most widely known for reproducing the weekly caricatures published in ''Vanity Fair'' magazine. The company was formed in 1867 when Vincent Brooks bought the name, good will and some of the property of Day & Son Ltd, which had gone into liquidation that year. The firm reproduced artwork and illustrations and went on to print many of the iconic London Underground posters of the twenties and thirties before being wound up in 1940. == Vincent Brooks == Company literature holds 1848 as the year that Vincent Robert Alfred Brooks (1815–1885) first set up in business.〔Document from the company’s 1923 Centenary Celebration. Brooks Family Collection.〕 His father was the radical printer and stationer John Brooks of 421 Oxford Street.〔Brooks, Frederick Vincent, undated, My Life’s Medley – an autobiography. Chapter 1, unpublished.〕 John Brooks has been described as the publisher of the Owenites because of his association with the early socialist Robert Owen.〔Medwin, Thomas, 1847, The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Vol. 1, p.102, Thomas Cautley Newby, London.〕 He was a member of the second council of the National Political Union〔National Political Union, 1833, Proceedings at the Second Annual Meeting of the National Political Union, held at The Crown and Anchor Tavern, Strand, on Monday, 4 February 1833. At the Office of the National Political Union; Westminster Review-office; and Effingham Wilson, (Packer, Printer, Albion Place, Walworth Road), London.〕 and is probably most noted for his edition of the radicals and reformers favourite, Shelley’s Queen Mab.〔Reiman , Donald H. & Fraistat , Neil, 2004, The Complete poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Vol. 2, 2nd edition, Johns Hopkins University Press, Maryland.〕 After leaving school, Vincent Brooks spent time on John Minter Morgan's farm estate near Uxbridge before returning to London to join his father in business.〔British & Colonial Printer & Stationer and Booksellers’ Circular. Vol. XV, No. 17. Thursday, 22 October 1885.〕 Around 1840 John Brooks relocated to the Channel Island of Jersey where he continued to trade as a wholesale stationer and paper merchant.〔Refer to ‘The Brooks’ Journey to Jersey’, http://vincentbrooksnotes.blogspot.com/2009/07/notes-made-from-elizabeth-brooks-diary.html〕 Vincent was left with the business in London.〔The 1841 Census shows Vincent Brooks living at 421 Oxford Street while John Brooks and family are now in Jersey. Census Returns of England and Wales & Channel Islands Census, 1841. Kew, Surrey, England. The National Archives of the UK: Public Record Office.〕 At some time during this period he was also associated with Charles Robertson, an artists’ colourman based in Long Acre.〔 It is not certain at what point Vincent Brooks first practised lithography. A number of his early pieces were shown at the Great Exhibition of 1851.〔 The following year the business moved from Oxford Street to 40 King Street, Covent Garden.〔 Vincent conducted lithographic classes at Marlborough House during 1855 in what was destined to become the Royal College of Art. He was entrusted with the Princess Royal’s Dying Soldier on the Battlefield, which was reproduced and sold in aid of the Patriotic fund.〔 The following year the Arundel Society commissioned a series of lithographs to be issued yearly to their subscribers. An effort described as ‘…the most important non-commercial application of chromolithography’ in the country at the time.〔Denvir, B., "The Loaded Image," Art & Artists (Sept. 1976), pp. 36–37.〕 However, the Arundel Society complained, maybe unjustly, about the quality or the lack of expertise in depicting religious subjects. The prints were also hampered by delays and by 1860 production had been switched to a German firm.〔Art Journal, 1874, pp. 39–40.〕 The Leighton Brothers, who would go on to produce the pictures featured in the Illustrated London News, left their Red Lion Square premises in 1857. Vincent Brooks is reported to have taken over the remaining plant.〔 Staying in the Covent Garden area of London, two years later, during 1859, Vincent Brooks moved to larger premises in Chandos Street.〔 The street is now renamed Chandos Place. Work from this era is marked either as Vincent Brooks Lith. or Vincent Brooks imp. London's International Exhibition of 1862 saw Vincent Brooks awarded a gold medal for his Lithograph of Mulready’s ‘Choosing the Wedding Gown’.〔The Times, 11 August 1921, Obituary of Frederick Vincent Brooks, London.〕 The same year Vincent Brooks produced one of his finest works in the form of a chromo-lithograph of the Lumley Portrait of William Shakespeare.〔 It is even reported that the reproduction was so complete that one was sold for forty guineas to a purchaser who thought he was buying the original portrait.〔Ingleby, C.M., 1883, Shakespeare’s Bones.〕 During the 1860s, Vincent Brooks acquired plant and premises of Messrs J.S.Hodgson & Son of High Street Lambeth and he embarked in letterpress and colour block printing.〔 The firm also fought off competition from Day & Son and Messrs Hanhart Bros in reproducing one of John Leech’s cartoons of Jorrocks in a competition organised by Punch Magazine. The company’s winning entry was reproduced by one of their leading chromo-lithographic artists, William B. Bunney, and the firm’s success led to many years of work from Punch.〔 In 1865 Vincent Brooks became involved with the ‘inventor’ of colour printing George Baxter. He purchased many of Baxter’s plates and printed them using Baxter’s presses which he had lent him on the understanding that George Baxter Jr. took up the management of them and that George Baxter himself supervised the work.〔Lewis, C. T. C., 1908, George Baxter (colour printer) his Life and Work: A Manual For Collectors, Sampson Low, Marston, London.〕 It was a complex process that required up to 20 blocks per image. The process failed to pay its way and Brooks sold the plant four years later to Abraham Le Blond.〔Lewis, C.T.C., 1920, The Le Blond Book, p.108, Sampson Low, Marston & Company, London and Edinburgh.〕 1866 saw Vincent Brooks joined in business by his second eldest son Frederick Vincent Brooks〔The Baxter Society, 1921, Quarterly Journal, Vol. 1, Hall & English, Birmingham.〕 who was to eventually take over after his father’s death. Vincent’s eldest son Alfred William Brooks had preceded his younger brother into the firm but ‘never had very robust health’〔 and by 1901 had left the business.〔The 1901 Census records Alfred’s occupation as ‘retired Lithographer’. Census Returns of England and Wales & Channel Islands Census, 1901. Kew, Surrey, England. The National Archives of the UK: Public Record Office.〕 Later that year the firm purchased William Willis’ remarkable Aniline process of direct photography,〔 which reproduced engineering ‘blue prints’ keeping the original positive image.〔Further reading on Willis and this process can be found at: http://www.platinummetalsreview.com/pdf/pmr-v28-i4-178-188.pdf p.183〕 At Paris’s Exposition Universelle, held during 1867, Vincent Brooks won a gold medal for ‘the excellence of their reproductions’.〔British & Colonial Printer & Stationer, 13 January 1927, Volume 100, Number 2., Page 22. Who’s Who: WV Brooks.〕 Vincent Brooks had started negotiating to take over the business of Day & Son Ltd during 1866.〔Lewis, C.T.C., 1924, George Baxter, The Picture Printer, P.195. Sampson Low, Marston & Co.〕 Financially assisted by the Mr. Henry Graves, the Printseller of Pall Mall,〔 Vincent Brooks bought their property, name, and goodwill in an agreement dated 25 March 1867.〔The Baxter Society, 1923, Quarterly Journal, Vol. 3.〕 The firm now became known as Vincent Brooks, Day & Son.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Vincent Brooks, Day & Son」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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