Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 50.djvu/264

 many figures in the foreground. While employed on the survey he made a large number of sketches of scenes and well-known persons in and about Edinburgh, sixty-eight of which are also in the museum print-room. He made many others of the scenery and antiquities of Scotland, and etched two small landscapes (1747–8), a set of six small landscapes (1748), and ten views of Scotland (1750). He quitted the service of the survey in 1751, and took up his abode for a time with his brother Thomas at Windsor, where the latter was now installed as deputy ranger of the Great Park. His next etchings—eight folio views of Edinburgh and other places in Scotland—are inscribed ‘Windsor, August 1751.’ At Windsor he assisted his brother, and made a series of drawings of the castle, the town, and its neighbourhood, which were purchased by Sir Joseph Banks. Some of these form part of the large collection of his drawings in the royal library at Windsor. He now etched a great number of plates after his own drawings, a hundred of which (including the views of Edinburgh, &c.) were published in a volume (1765) by Ryland and Bryer. In 1760 he issued twelve etchings of ‘The Cries of London.’ He also made many plates after other artists, including his brother. He etched David Allan's illustrations to Ramsay's ‘Gentle Shepherd’ (1758); a year or two later, in conjunction with Edward Rooker, engraved those by John Collins to Tasso's ‘Jerusalem Delivered,’ and in 1761 he published ‘Eight Views in North America and the West Indies,’ from drawings by Governor Thomas Pownall [q. v.] and others.

It was Hogarth's ‘Analysis of Beauty’ which provoked his first attempts at caricature. In 1753 and 1754 he published anonymously several single plates, in which he tried, with more animus than success, to turn Hogarth's weapons against that great satirist himself. Hogarth's pretensions as an arbiter of taste, his want of education, his contempt of the old masters, his opposition to public academies, which was probably the prime cause of Sandby's animosity, his attempts at ‘high art’ (especially his ‘Paul before Felix’) were among the themes of Sandby's ridicule. The caricatures included a parody of Hogarth's ‘March to Finchley,’ and a plate called ‘The Burlesquer burlesqued,’ in which Hogarth is represented as a pug-dog painting a history piece suited to his capacity. In 1762 Hogarth's political satire, called ‘The Times,’ in support of the Bute ministry, and his consequent collision with Wilkes and Churchill, again provoked Sandby's hostility, and produced several burlesques of Hogarth's prints, including ‘A set of blocks for Hogarth's Wigs—designed for the city—see “North Briton,” No. xix.’ and ‘A Touch on the “Times,” plate i., or the “Butefyer”’ (for descriptions of Sandby's caricatures, see Cat. of Satirical Prints, in the British Museum, by F. G. Stephens). It is said that Sandby's admiration of Hogarth's genius made him withdraw his caricatures from circulation, after seeing his pictures of the ‘Marriage à-la-mode,’ but as the latter were finished and engraved as early as 1745, his repentance was rather late. Now and again, though rarely, in his after life his sense of the ridiculous or his indignation found vent in caricatures. The tax on post-horses was the cause of one in 1782, and balloon ascents (by John Sheldon and Blanchard from Chelsea, and by Lunardi from Vauxhall) of others in 1784. Perhaps the best of his works of this kind was that representing Vestris, the famous dancing-master, giving lessons to a goose. It was published on a sheet with some lively verses. But Sandby's caricatures and his many doggerel verses also were only sportive incidents in his serious career.

It is not recorded how long Sandby lived with his brother at Windsor, but he is said to have spent a portion of each year in London, and much of his time was probably spent in sketching excursions. On 3 May 1757 he married Miss Anne Stogden, a lady of much personal charm, as appears by her portrait by Francis Cotes; but his first fixed address which is recorded is at Mr. Pow's, Dufours Court, Broad Street, Carnaby Market, where he was living in 1760. In this year he contributed to the first exhibition of the Society of Artists, and was one of the forty artists who met at the Turk's Head Tavern; they agreed to meet again on 5 Nov. in the following year at the artists' feast at the Foundling Hospital, in suits of clothes manufactured by the children of the hospital at Ackworth in Yorkshire. He exhibited regularly at the society's exhibitions (1760–1768), and was one of the first directors when it was incorporated in 1765. In 1766 appeared ‘Six Views of London,’ engraved by Edward Rooker [q. v.], after drawings by himself and his brother. In 1768 he was appointed chief drawing-master at the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich. On the formation of the Royal Academy in 1768 he was one of the twenty-eight members nominated by George III. He often served upon the council, and was a contributor to every exhibition from 1769 to 1809, except in the eight years 1783–5, 1789, 1796, and 1803–5. In 1766 he removed to Poland Street, and in 1772 purchased No. 4 St. George's Row, Oxford