Description

An original antique stone lithograph based on the work of John Thorpe (fl. 1570-1618). Published in Charles James Richardson’s ‘Architectural Remains of the Reigns of Elizabeth and James I’ in 1838. Engraved by Day and Haghe from sketches by Richardson. Stone lithography is the ideal medium for such work, as the fine detail captures the impression of the artist’s pencil sketch. The intention of Richardson’s publication was to present ‘a full, correct, and comprehensive collection’ of the more valuable examples of Elizabethan and Jacobean architecture, as opposed to those ‘deficient in unity and simplicity of character’. The idea for the publication was suggested by the many ‘curious and original drawings’ by John Thorpe to be found in Sir John Soane’s Museum. John Thorpe was a prominent architect of the period. As Richardson puts it, ‘there were few celebrated houses then erecting in which Thorpe was not engaged’.

This engraving shows Richardson’s reproduction of drawings in John Thorpe’s sketch book. They depict the exteriors and plans of two of the ‘most curious’ examples of ornamented wooden-frame buildings to be found in Thorpe’s sketch book. Richardson writes that ‘from the careful manner in which the plans seem to have been considered, they were probably actual residences of some of the gentry of the time’. ‘View in Perspective of an Exterior’, from the same collection, is Richardson’s view in perspective of the lower of the two exteriors depicted here, which he considered to be ‘the most curious and complete example of the wooden architecture of the 16th Century handed down to us by Thorpe’.