History
The print was produced in a single state, although there are variations on the printing. The British Museum has a number of copies of the subscription ticket, made out to various subscribers, and an example of a later version, which lacked the subscription information but had the addition of "Design'd and Etch'd by Wm Hogarth Decem 1. 1753." below the image, survives in the Hunterian Museum. The unannotated version is believed to have been used as a frontispiece for some copies of the Analysis of Beauty. In 1754, Hogarth was advertising separate copies of Columbus Breaking the Egg for one shilling. Unusually, the original copperplate survived the First World War when many of Hogarth's plates were scrapped to produce material for munitions and aircraft. Quaritch, the owner of a large number of Hogarth's original plates, donated many to the Government to help the war effort, but the plate of Columbus Breaking the Egg was sold to Charles Scribner's Sons in 1921 and later sold on to a private collector. The Royal Library has an unfinished version of the scene, which Nichols believed to be a proof, but Paulson dismisses as an "extremely cunning copy ... left unfinished or purposely made to resemble an unfinished proof."
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