Johannes Kip after Leonard Knyff

Windsor

26.75 x 21.5 inches

A Prospect of the House at Windsor, Belonging to His Grace Charles Beauclerck Duke of St. Alban's. Earl of Burford and Baron of Heddington. Capt. of the Honble. Band of Gentlemen Pensioners, Marshall and Surveyor of the Hawkes to his Majesty & one of the Gentlemen of the Bed Chamber. A copper plate engraving by Kip after Knyff, published in London in 1724.

The early eighteenth century in England was dominated by the work of a group of Dutch artists and engravers who came to live and work in London. It was in 1707 that David Mortier offered for sale the first series of large volumes of topographical engravings of English towns and estates initially under the collective name of Britannia Illustrata (1707) and later, from 1715 onwards, Le Nouveau Theatre de la Grande Bretagne. Kip engraved the majority of the plates for this work either after his own designs or after the drawings of his fellow Dutchman, Leonard Knyff. The most sought after plates are the large panoramas of London, which give us an unparalleled view of the city at the beginning of the eighteenth century. More frequently found are his aerial views of English country houses and estates where each plate depicts a countryseat surrounded by formal gardens and farmland. Many of the houses and gardens are pictured in their seventeenth century state before the great remodelling and landscaping of the mid eighteenth century. The work therefore provides an invaluable historical resource and is one of the most comprehensive and decorative topographical studies attempted in the eighteenth century.

£650