Samuel & Nathaniel Buck

The South West View of Melton Constable in the County of Norfolk, the seat of Sir Jacob Astley Bart.

27 x 19 inches

For such an enormous corpus of work that they left behind, we know surprisingly little about the brothers Samuel and Nathaniel Buck. They were born in Yorkshire at the very end of the C17th but did most of their work throughout England and Wales from the 1720s onwards. For the next two decades they travelled the length and breadth of the country illustrating and recording many of the towns, country houses and important buildings that they visited. As competent engravers and printmakers they were well equipped to publicise their work. Alongside "Bucks Antiquities" were the famous townscapes that became so cherished and have remained sought after ever since. The initial drawing and surveying must have been painstaking and exhausting but they have left us with the most wonderful architectural legacy from the early C18th. Melton Constable Hall was an important estate in Norfolk. Sir Jacob Astley (to whom the print is dedicated) commissioned Sir Christopher Wren to design a new house between 1664 and 1670. The result is what is considered by many to be the finest example of a Wren house in existence. In this charming print we see can admire its exquisite proportions and get a glimpse of the gracious Georgian living that it represents.