Cryer, George (McKechnie Section 1)

See also Section Six

Known from a trade label which suggests that Cryer was the manager of two galleries and employed artists to work for him. Two addresses are given on this trade label: 68 Cornhill and 98 Fleet Street. To judge from the one extant silhouette, Cryer's galleries were in existence in the early 1830s. Several types of likeness are offered, including work in colour. Foskett lists no artist of this name; miniatures in full or three-quarter face may have been offered, but the wording of the trade label is a little ambiguous here. Possibly the artists employed were not of Royal Academy exhibition standard.

Since only one silhouette is known to me, and Cryer appears to have employed more than one artist, I cannot form valid generalizations about the type of work produced. The profile is rather large (3 in. high). It is cut and bronzed in a rather spidery fashion in gold paint, without the use of yellow to supplement the gold in the shadows: a technique sometimes used during the 1830s. As this example is bronzed, it was probably offered at 5s., whereas the plain black work cost 2s. 6d. and the profile miniatures in colour 10s.6d. The mention of oil colour on the label is unusual.

It is evident from the label that mechanical means were used to secure a basic outline. There is no evidence that Cryer's galleries produced full-length work. The text of the trade label (also illustrated) is given below:

G. CRYER, 68 CORNHILL.

CORRECT LIKENESSES

Taken in Profile

By a

PATENT MACHINE,

In One Minute

at 2/6 & 5/- in Black & 10/6 in

COLOURS

The most Accurate Portraits are

taken in Oil & Miniature,

by the

FIRST ARTISTS.

A great variety of Gilt, &

Gold Frames.

G. CRYER, 98, FLEET ST.

Ills. 330, 331