This is a scan of a rather faded print that hangs above my piano – found on a stall at Cambridge Market for 10p (‘Nice picture; two bob?’) among a pile of Victorian generals, circa 1971. Having just written an essay on Liszt (for Philip Radcliffe), I knew at once who it was.
The mount is labelled ‘London, Richard Bentley, 1843’. The print was included in ‘Bentley’s Miscellany’ of 1848, but I suspect it was a Punch cartoon first.
The scrawly signature is not, as I first thought, ‘F Liszt’, but ‘J Leech’ – John Leech, prolific and well-known Punch cartoonist.
So… was Liszt in London in 1843? Any thoughts on whose salon this might be (if not entirely fictional)?
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