15 - A miscellany of prints

Summary

The most evocative, detailed and informative prints are of course the large ones, so often issued in series, as we have seen. But there was a whole industry of small, cheap prints, which, while mostly lacking in precision and detail, may well supplement the larger ones and fill in gaps. Some important gardens, indeed, are recorded only in small prints. A range of publications carried such prints: magazines or books, with images sometimes sold separately. The problem today is that so many small prints were cut out from their original publications that it may be difficult to identify the source or date. Even if the caption survives, and it well may not, the publication can remain unknown, along with the identity of the artist or engraver, anonymity being the normal case.

A number of smaller prints have already been illustrated in previous chapters. Sometimes they are based on large originals, and sometimes they are just to give a general, rather vague impression. But rarely were the finest engravers involved: the quality of the prints leads to the inescapable conclusion that economy was all. Cheap to produce meant engaging lesser lights in the engraving profession, and the need to provide images quickly would rule out the painstaking practices of the great printmakers.

This chapter enables readers to make comparison between the quality of large, medium and small prints. Small does not always mean vague or generalised, and sharpness of detail is possible (vide the sets by Watts and Angus covered in Chapter 13). However, large prints have a distinct advantage when it comes to architectural detail or plantings: so often are trees depicted generically rather than portraying individual species in smaller prints.

Large prints

Most large prints have been covered in previous chapters, particularly with relation to Woollett, Sullivan, Vivares and Anthony Walker. There were a few others, however, that deserve mention. There is a pair by Joseph Wood, possibly a pupil of Chatelain and known for his landscape work, after John Harris the Younger, of Warfield, Berkshire, which is a site seldom mentioned by garden historians (Figs 15.1 and 15.2). The views are largely as seen today and indicate large-scale landscaping with some formality (lines of trees) combined with dense woodland, bare banks in Brownian style and a few follies, all at a transitional time (1753).