Mezzotint portrait of Samuel Adams

AMERICAN REVOLUTION - ADAMS, Samuel. Mr. Samuel Adams.[Newport, RI:] printed by and for Charles Reak & Saml. Okey, April 1775. Mezzotint portrait by Saml. Okey after J. Mitchell (sheet size: 346x247 mm). Condition: cut to the edge of the image on three sides and within the plate-mark at the lower margin, with loss of imprint. very rare american mezzotint of a revolutionary hero. In this portrait Adams is standing in front of a table with a paper in his hand, engraved with the words "Instructions from ye Town of Boston" -- probably referring to his famous Circular Letter. Below the title are eight lines of verse in two columns celebrating Adams's opposition to the Intolerable Acts: "When haughty North impress'd wth proud Disdain, / Spurn'd at the Virtue, which rejects his Chain; / Heard with a Tyrant Soon our Rights implor'd, / And when we su'd for Justice sent the Sword: / Lo! Adams rose, in Warfare nobly try'd, / His Country's Saviour, Father, Shield & Guide, / Urg'd by her Wrongs he wag'd ye glorious Strife / Nor paus'd to waste a Coward-Thought on Life." The painting by J. Mitchell after which the mezzotint was designed was based on J. S. Copley's portrait of Adams now in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Samuel Okey had only a very short working life in the Americas: he engraved and published in Newport from 1773-1775, and had returned to London by 1778. Only one other example of this American mezzotint has appeared at auction, selling in 2005 for $13,800. Another example of this print is in the Emmet Collection (EM 495) in the New York Public Lilbrary. Cf. Bulletin of the NYPL, vol.I, p.163; Grolier. Early American Engraving upon Copper1727-1850 (1908) cat. # 181; Shadwell 46; Stauffer 2370.