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WOOLLETT, William (1735-1785)
A View of the Cascade &c. in the Garden of Sir Francis Dashwood Bart. & of the Parish Church &c at West Wycomb in the County of Bucks
London: J. Boydell, Henry Parker & Elizabeth Bakerwell, Thomas Bowles, J.Bowles & Son, and Robert Sayer, circa 1760. Copper engraving, coloured by hand. Very good condition. Sheet size: 14 1/4 x 20 1/2 inches (visible). Gilt frame. Frame size: 24 1/8 x 29 7/8 inches.
A fine image of the garden of the Dashwood estate in West Wycombe, Buckinghamshire.
Born in Maidstone in 1735, William Woollett was one of the most renowned landscape engravers of his time and the first English engraver to achieve popular success in continental Europe. His artistic aptitude became apparent at an early age, and he was sent to London to train at St. Martin's Lane Academy and apprentice with the engraver and print seller John Tinney. Woollett began his career with a series of topographical views, but first truly distinguished himself as skilled engraver with the publication of his print of Richard Wilson's Destruction of the Children of Niobe. His copious plates after artists such as Stubbs, Vernet, and Claude proved so popular, that many of them were copied by engravers on the Continent. Beginning in 1766, he became an active member of the Society of Artists, where he served in a variety of positions. Although he specialized in landscapes, Woollett also engraved a number of marine and historical scenes including the print for which he is most famous, Death of General Wolfe after Benjamin West, and for which he was received the honorable title of Historical Engraver to His Majesty.
Sir Francis Dashwood is most famous for having renovated a former monastery into a country estate and to serve as a setting for the weekend debaucheries of the Hell-Fire Club. He was also for a time the Chancellor of the Exchequer, despite the fact that (according a fellow aristocrat) he found sums of five figures "an impenetrable secret".
Cf. Dictionary of National Biography. Rockingham, Charles Memoirs.
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#13329 $1,900.00 
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© 2002-2005 Donald A. Heald
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