|
||
|
|
|
|
One of the Best Bird's-Eye Views of London.
A handsome example of one of the great 17th-century views of London, in sheets, all of which with wide margins.
The view is taken from roughly above Lambeth Palace, on the south bank of the River Thames. It takes in much of built-up London north of the Thames, but one of the most charming aspects of the view is its treatment of the pastoral landscape south of the River. Along with Hollar's "Long View" of 1647, this is unquestionably one of the greatest images of the City from that period.
Pennington (1013) was able to discern states of the view, although neither he nor Hind were able to provide definitive dating of the states and substrates. Pennington does say that state ii was completed after 1697. Pennington and Hind suggest that in the late state the print was issued by Robert Sayer and his successor Laurie and Whittle. Based on the paper, the present example would seem to have been done circa 1760. Parthey was under the impression that the first state of the view was made before the Great Fire in 1666, though Hind questioned that. The British Museum dates the print to 1647, like so many of Hollar's other views of London.
Hind (18) comments:
The view is taken from nearly above and behind Lambeth Palace. The river scarcely seen E. of Somerset House. Extent W., to Peterborough House (i.e. just short of Tothill Fields, which are included in the Long View of 1647).
Of particular interest as showing the fields on the S. side of the Thames.
This view is described by Parthey as London before the Fire, but I have only seen impressions showing the new St. Paul's Cathedral. These impressions all show what seems to be rework (coarsely done, and hardly by Hollar) on Sheets 3 and 4, and the town as rebuilt on the parts destroyed by the Fire. St. Paul's shows its dome, but only one of the W. Towers. The Monument is shown and a reference to the Monument (which was in building 1671-1677). It is dated 1674 in the Crace collection catalogue, but I do not know on what foundation
The two left sheets (1 and 2) show Hollar's work most purely. Unless Hollar left the other plates unfinished, one must expect to find impressions of the earlier state before the coarser rework. The plates of this subject descended to the eighteenth-century printseller Robert Sayer, and no doubt after him to his successors, Laurie and Whittle, so that late and reworked impressions are common. It was published in this late state with the impressions from each plate folded for binding.
![[ London ] An Exact Survey of the City's of London Westminster ye Borough of Southwark and the Country Near Ten Miles Round Begun In 1741 & Ended in 1745 By John Rocque Land Surveyor & Engrau'd By Richard Parr / A New and Accurate Survey Of the Cities of London and Westminster The Borough of Southwark with The Country about it for nineteen Miles in Length and thirteen in Depth . . .](https://storage.googleapis.com/raremaps/img/small/96431.jpg)
