Vincent Brooks, Day & Son was a major British lithographic firm most widely known for reproducing the weekly caricatures published in Vanity Fair magazine. The company was formed in 1867 when Vincent Brooks bought the name, good will and some of the property of Day & Son Ltd, which had gone into liquidation that year. The firm reproduced artwork and illustrations and went on to print many of the iconic London Underground posters of the twenties and thirties before being wound up in 1940.
Vincent Brooks Company literature holds 1848 as the year that Vincent Robert Alfred Brooks (1815–1885) first set up in business.Document from the company’s 1923 Centenary Celebration. Brooks Family Collection. His father was the radical printer and stationer John Brooks of 421 Oxford Street.Brooks, Frederick Vincent, undated, My Life’s Medley – an autobiography. Chapter 1, unpublished. John Brooks has been described as the publisher of the Owenites because of his association with the early socialist Robert Owen.Medwin, Thomas, 1847, The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Vol. 1, p. 102, Thomas Cautley Newby, London. He published an edition of Percy Bysshe Shelley's Queen Mab,Reiman, Donald H. & Fraistat, Neil, 2004, The Complete poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Vol. 2, 2nd edition, Johns Hopkins University Press, Maryland. and was a member of the second council of the National Political Union.National Political Union, 1833, Proceedings at the Second Annual Meeting of the National Political Union, held at The Crown and Anchor Tavern, Strand, on Monday, 4 February 1833. At the Office of the National Political Union; Westminster Review-office; and Effingham Wilson, (Packer, Printer, Albion Place, Walworth Road), London.
After leaving school, Vincent Brooks spent time on John Minter Morgan's farm estate near Uxbridge before returning to London to join his father in business.British & Colonial Printer & Stationer and Booksellers' Circular. Vol. XV, No. 17. Thursday, 22 October 1885. Around 1840 John Brooks relocated to the Channel Island of Jersey where he continued to trade as a wholesale stationer and paper merchant. Vincent was left with the business in London.The 1841 Census shows Vincent Brooks living at 421 Oxford Street while John Brooks and family are now in Jersey. Census Returns of England and Wales & Channel Islands Census, 1841. Kew, Surrey, England. The National Archives of the UK: Public Record Office. At some time during this period he was also associated with Charles Robertson, an artists' colourman based in Long Acre.
It is not certain at what point Vincent Brooks first practised lithography. A number of his early pieces were shown at the Great Exhibition of 1851. The following year the business moved from Oxford Street to 40 King Street, Covent Garden.
Vincent conducted lithographic classes at Marlborough House during 1855 in what was destined to become the Royal College of Art. He was entrusted with the Princess Royal's Dying Soldier on the Battlefield, which was reproduced and sold in aid of the Patriotic fund. The following year the Arundel Society commissioned a series of lithographs to be issued yearly to their subscribers. An effort described as ‘...the most important non-commercial application of chromolithography' in the country at the time.Denvir, B., "The Loaded Image," Art & Artists (Sept. 1976), pp. 36–37. However, the Arundel Society complained, maybe unjustly, about the quality or the lack of expertise in depicting religious subjects. The prints were also hampered by delays and by 1860 production had been switched to a German firm.The Art Journal, 1874, pp. 39–40.
The Leighton Brothers, who would go on to produce the pictures featured in the Illustrated London News, left their Red Lion Square premises in 1857. Vincent Brooks is reported to have taken over the remaining plant.
Staying in the Covent Garden area of London, two years later, during 1859, Vincent Brooks moved to larger premises in Chandos Street. The street is now renamed Chandos Place. Work from this era is marked either as Vincent Brooks Lith. or Vincent Brooks imp.
London's International Exhibition of 1862 saw Vincent Brooks awarded a gold medal for his Lithograph of Mulready's Choosing the Wedding Gown.The Times, 11 August 1921, Obituary of Frederick Vincent Brooks. The same year Vincent Brooks produced one of his finest works in the form of a chromo-lithograph of the Lumley Portrait of William Shakespeare. It is even reported that the reproduction was so complete that one was sold for forty guineas to a purchaser who thought he was buying the original portrait.Ingleby, C.M., 1883, Shakespeare’s Bones.
During the 1860s, Vincent Brooks acquired plant and premises of Messrs J.S.Hodgson & Son of High Street Lambeth and he embarked in letterpress and colour block printing. The firm also fought off competition from Day & Son and Messrs Hanhart Bros in reproducing one of John Leech's cartoons of Jorrocks in a competition organised by Punch Magazine. The company's winning entry was reproduced by one of their leading chromo-lithographic artists, William B. Bunney, and the firm's success led to many years of work from Punch.
In 1865 Vincent Brooks became involved with the 'inventor' of colour printing George Baxter. He purchased many of Baxter's plates and printed them using Baxter's presses which he had lent him on the understanding that George Baxter Jr. took up the management of them and that George Baxter himself supervised the work.Lewis, C. T. C., 1908, George Baxter (colour printer) his Life and Work: A Manual For Collectors, Sampson Low, Marston, London. It was a complex process that required up to 20 blocks per image. The process failed to pay its way and Brooks sold the plant four years later to Abraham Le Blond.Lewis, C.T.C., 1920, The Le Blond Book, p. 108, Sampson Low, Marston & Company, London and Edinburgh.
1866 saw Vincent Brooks joined in business by his second eldest son Frederick Vincent BrooksThe Baxter Society, 1921, Quarterly Journal, Vol. 1, Hall & English, Birmingham. who was to eventually take over after his father's death. Vincent's eldest son Alfred William Brooks had preceded his younger brother into the firm but 'never had very robust health' and by 1901 had left the business.The 1901 Census records Alfred’s occupation as 'retired Lithographer'. Census Returns of England and Wales & Channel Islands Census, 1901. Kew, Surrey, England. The National Archives of the UK: Public Record Office. Later that year the firm purchased William Willis’ remarkable Aniline process of direct photography, which reproduced engineering 'blue prints' keeping the original positive image.
At Paris's Exposition Universelle, held during 1867, Vincent Brooks won a gold medal for 'the excellence of their reproductions'.British & Colonial Printer & Stationer, 13 January 1927, Volume 100, Number 2., Page 22. Who’s Who: WV Brooks.
Vincent Brooks had started negotiating to take over the business of Day & Son Ltd during 1866.Lewis, C.T.C., 1924, George Baxter, The Picture Printer, p. 195. Sampson Low, Marston & Co. Financially assisted by the Henry Graves, the Printseller of Pall Mall, Vincent Brooks bought their property, name, and goodwill in an agreement dated 25 March 1867.The Baxter Society, 1923, Quarterly Journal, Vol. 3. The firm now became known as Vincent Brooks, Day & Son.
Day & Son The firm of William Day, later Day & Son, has been described as one of the largest and most prominent lithographic firms of the second third of the nineteenth century.Tidman, Kathy Kajander, 1997, Art for the Victorian Household, p. 13, Online Originals, London & Bordeaux. Company documents record William Day's business starting in 1823 although the first known lithograph was produced the following year. By 1829 the firm had moved from 59 Great Queen Street to 17 Gate Street.Twyman, Michael, 1976, A Directory of London Lithographic Printer, 1800–1850. As cited by K.K. Tidman, Op. cit.
From the early thirties the company was often referred to as Day & Haghe. This was due to the popularity of the work of Louis Haghe a Belgian draughtsman and water colourist who worked for the company until 1852 when he left to focus on painting.
The firm was granted the status of 'Lithographers to Queen Victoria and to the Queen Dowager, Queen Adelaide' in 1837"Spotlight on Vincent Brooks, Day and Son", 'INTO PRINT' (house journal of Sanders Philips Corporation), n.d. pp. 2–3. As cited by K.K. Tidman, Op. cit. although they were not the only lithographers to be awarded the Royal Warrant. William Day Senior died in 1845Day, William Jr., 1891, Notes and Queries, p. 452 leaving the business in the hands of his son William Day Junior. The company now became known as Day & Son.
The 1850s started with a prize medal at the Great Exhibition for their display of lithography.Korey, M.E. & McLean, Ruari, 1995. Elegant Editions: Aspects of Victorian Book Design and Colour Printing, University of Toronto, Massey College, Canada. In the mid fifties the premises in Gate Street were enlarged and the Prince of Wales and Prince Alfred visited (probably the completed works) in 1856.Illustrated London News, 1856, p. 488. This wood-engraving has been reproduced in M. Twyman’s "The Tinted Lithograph", Journal of the Printing Historical Society, 1965, vol. 1, p. 55. That the premises were enlarged around this time is indicated in the 'Abridged Prospectus' quoted below on p. 280. As cited by K.K. Tidman Op. cit.
In 1851, Day & Son was commissioned by Matthew Digby Wyatt, known for his work as an architect, to produce the book The Industrial Arts of the Nineteenth Century, an imposing imperial folio in two volumes which illustrates a selection of items from the Great Exhibition of 1851.Leathlean, Howard. The Archaeology of the Art Director? Some Examples of Art Direction in Mid-Nineteenth-Century British Publishing. Journal of Design History, Vol. 6, No. 4 (1993), pp. 229–245. Oxford University Press on behalf of Design History Society. There are 160 chromolithographed plates. Wyatt himself stated that he had used 'the best means of graphic representation available'.M. Digby Wyatt, Industrial Arts of the Nineteenth Century, 2 vols., Day & Son, 1851-3, vol. 1, p. v. Wyatt proudly drew attention to the previously unsurpassed scale and speed of production of the book. But what brought the entire project into being was the desire of Day & Son to demonstrate the potential of chromolithography. The firm was particularly associated with the process. However, as Wyatt himself explained, the proposal was not even formalized until after the Great Exhibition had opened. Such a grandiose production must have called into play a significant proportion of Day's resources, including skilled craftsmen and lithographers such as Francis Bedford, J.A. Vinter and Henry Rafter, as well as significant capital, and management. According to Wyatt, four or five of Day's staff were constantly engaged upon the business details of the operation alone.
In 1861 the firm printed a large run of bank notes for Lajos Kossuth, the famous Hungarian patriot and democratic. Kossuth was in exile from his homeland and this attempt at re-establishing a separate Hungarian currency lead to both him and Day & Son to be charged in the courts with having 'levied war upon the Emperor of Austria'. The affair ended with Day & Son delivering the notes to the Bank of England where they were duly burnt.Colebrook, F., "A Fine Old Lithographer", 'Modern Lithographer', 1906, p. 537. As cited by K.K. Tidman Op. cit.