Landscape in Scotland with a Hay Cart and Buildings, near Edinburgh. by Paul Sandby, 1725-1809

Paul Sandby, 1725-1809
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Landscape in Scotland with a Hay Cart and Buildings, near Edinburgh.

Original etching in black ink. 1750. With the etched inscription and signature: 'Etched on the Spot by P.Sandby 1750.' From the first issue of the second Scottish series, 1750. Impression prior to the combined issue of all the Scottish etchings by Ryland and Bryer in 1765. With the
engraved no 2 and the letter 'H'.

Very fine delicate impression. On cream laid 18th century paper. Generally excellent condition. Trimmed just inside the platemark, but with 1/4 to 3/4 inch margins. Sheet: 9 x 7 1/8ins. Image: 8 1/8 x 6 5/8ins. (206x168mm)

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A beautiful example of the delicacy of one of Sandby's earliest prints, drawn in pure etching, during the first part of his career when he was employed by the Ordnance survey on map-making in Scotland.

Paul Sandby was one of the most important English landscape artists of the mid 18th century. His importance lies not only in the simple beauty of his handling of line and tone but also in the fact that he was really the first painter in England to fully understand and express the concept of 'The Picturesque'. The picturesque is an essential element in the transition from classicism and the romantic into the realism which was to be a driving force of the 19th century. It has been perfectly defined by that great writer on English 18th century art Iola Williams as ' that quality of attractiveness which resides in irregular broken surfaces, and in things seamed and roughened by the dilapidation of time'. It was a central concept in the changing ideas of architecture, in the great landscape designs of English country house parks, and above all in art. In Sandby it is perfectly expressed in his eye for the grouping of buildings, in the pattern of light on trees, on the flow of hills or in light on water.

In drawing and painting Sandby used a style typical of his period, a defined line linked to washes of colour or tone. It was this same technique which he used in his prints. His earliest prints, such as those of Scotland, were drawn in pure etching. However at the beginning of the 1770's he began to make his first prints in the revolutionary medium of aquatint. Whilst it cannot really be claimed that Sandby invented the medium of brush-drawn aquatint, as Le Prince in France had begun to experiment with a form of aquatint in the 1750's, Sandby was certainly the first artist to truly realise its visual possibilities. Aquatint uses a resin which when applied to a copperplate and then heated turns into a minute pattern of granules around which the etching acid bites creating an area of tone rather than line. Sandby discovered a way of converting Le Prince's dry aquatint powder into a liquid wash and then brushing it onto the plate in a tonal version of a watercolour wash. It resulted in print images with the most beautiful qualities of tonal light.

Sandby's earliest aquatints are views in Wales, drawn during visits to his friend Sir Watkin Williams-Wynne. These Welsh views were followed by studies of Warwick and Windsor, and by other views in Southern England. The handling of the brushed tones in some of these prints is of a quite exceptional delicacy and beauty, the variations in density quite extraordinarily subtle, creating dappled patterns of light and surface which are the very essence of the 'picturesque' English landscape.