HOLLAR, Wenceslaus, a celebrated engraver, born at Prague in 1607. His parents were respectable, and he was at first designed for the study of the law. But the civil commotions which happened in his youth having ruined his family affairs, he was obliged to shift for himself; and discovering some genius for the arts, he was placed with Marian, an able designer and engraver of views. Being himself a man of great ingenuity, he profited largely from the instruction of his tutor. He principally excelled in drawing geometrical and perspective views, and plans of buildings ancient and modern, also landscapes, and every kind of natural and artificial curiosities, which he executed with a pen, in a style well adapted to the purpose. He travelled through part of Germany; but notwithstanding his merit, he met with so little encouragement that he found it difficult to support himself. The Earl of Arundel being in Germany, took him under his protection, brought him to England, and recommended him to the favour of Charles I. He engraved a variety of plates from the Arundel collection, and the portrait of the earl himself upon horseback. The civil wars which broke out soon afterwards in England ruined his fortune. He was taken prisoner with some of the royal party, and escaped with difficulty; upon which he returned to Antwerp, and joined his old patron the Earl of Arundel. He settled in that city for a time, and published a considerable number of plates; but his patron having soon afterwards proceeded to Italy for the benefit of his health, Hollar fell again into distress, and was obliged to work for the printsellers and booksellers of Antwerp at very low prices. At the Restoration he returned to England, where, though he had sufficient employment, the prices he received for his engravings were so inadequate to the labour necessarily required, that he could barely procure a subsistence; and the plague, with the succeeding fire of London, having for some time put an effectual stop to business, his affairs were so much embarrassed that he was never afterwards able to improve his fortune. It is said that he used to work for the booksellers at the rate of fourpence an hour, and always had an hour-glass before him. But all his industry, to which his numerous works bear ample testimony, failed to procure him a sufficient maintenance. On the verge of his seventieth year he was attached with an execution at his lodgings in Gardener’s Lane, Westminster, when he desired only the liberty of dying in his bed, and that he might not be removed to any other prison than the grave, a favour which it is uncertain whether or not he obtained. He died in 1677. According to Vertue’s Catalogue, his works amount to nearly twenty-four thousand prints, and the lovers of art are always zealous to collect them. Generally speaking, they are etchings performed almost entirely with the point. Their merits are thus characterized by Mr Strutt: “They possess great spirit, with astonishing freedom and lightness,· especially when we consider how highly he has finished some of them. His views of abbeys, churches, ruins, &c. with his shells, muff’s, and every species of still life, are admirable; his landscapes frequently have great merit; and his distant views of towns and cities are not only executed in a very accurate, but a very pleasing manner.” But a somewhat colder character is given of them by Mr Gilpin in his essay on prints: “Hollar gives us views of particular places, which he copies with great truth, unornamented, as he found them. If we are satisfied with exact representations, we have them nowhere better than in Hollar’s works; but if we expect pictures, we must seek them elsewhere. Hollar was an antiquarian and a draughtsman, but seems to have been but little acquainted with the principles of painting. Stiffness is his characteristic, and a painful exactness void of taste. His larger views are mere plans. In some of his smaller, at the expense of infinite pains, something of an effect is sometimes produced. But in general we consider him as a repository of curiosities, a record of antiquated dresses, abolished ceremonies, and edifices now in ruins.”