HOLLAR, WENZEL or WENCESLAUS (VACLAF Ho LAR) (1607-1677), Bohemian etcher, was born at Prague on July 13, 16o7, and died in London, being buried at St. Margaret's church, Westminster, on March 28, 1677. The earliest of his works that have been handed down are dated 1625 and 1626; they are small plates, and one of them is a copy of a "Virgin and Child" by Diirer, whose influence upon Hollar's work was always great. In 1627 he was at Frankfurt, working under Matthew Merian, an etcher and engraver; thence he passed to Strasbourg and thence, in 1633, to Cologne. There he attracted the notice of the famous amateur Thomas, earl of Arundel, then on an embassy to the imperial court; and with him Hollar travelled to Vienna and Prague, and finally came in 1637 to England. Though he lived in the household of the earl of Arundel, he seems to have worked not exclusively for him, but to have begun that slavery to the pub lishers which was afterwards the normal condition of his life. In his first year in England he made for Stent, the print-seller, the magnificent View of Greenwich, nearly a yard long, and received thirty shillings for the plate. Afterwards there is mention of his fixing the price of his work at fourpence an hour, and measuring his time by a sand-glass. The earl of Arundel left England in 1642 and Hollar passed into the service of the duke of York. With other Royalist artists, notably Inigo Jones and Faithorne, he stood the long and eventful siege of Basing House ; and there exist some hundred plates from his hand dated during the years and 1644. Taken prisoner, he escaped or was released, and joined the earl of Arundel at Antwerp, where he spent eight years, the prime of his working life, and produced his finest plates of every kind, his noblest views, amongst them being "The Long View of London from the Bankside," his miraculous "muffs" and "shells" and the superb portrait of the duke of York. In 1652 he returned to London and lived for a time with Faithorne the engraver near Temple Bar. During the following years were published many hooks which he illustrated :—Ogilby's Virgil and Homer, Stapyl ton's Juvenal, and Dugdale's Warwickshire, St. Paul's and Mon asticon (part i.). After the Great Fire he produced some of his famous "Views of London"; and it may have been the success of these plates which induced the king to send him in 1668 to Tan gier, to draw the town and forts. During his return to England oc curred the desperate and successful engagement fought by his ship the "Mary Rose," under Captain Kempthorne, against seven Algerine men-of-war, a brilliant affair which Hollar etched for Ogilby's Africa. He lived eight years after his return, still work ing for the booksellers and retaining to the end his wonderful powers; witness the large plate of Edinburgh (dated 167o), one of the greatest of his works. He died in extreme poverty, his last recorded words being a request to the bailiffs that they would not carry away the bed on which he was dying.
Almost complete collections of Hollar's works exist in the British Museum and in the library at Windsor Castle. Two admirable catalogues of his plates have been made, one in 1745 (2nd ed., r 759) by George Vertue, and an exhaustive one (Berlin, 1853) by Parthey.