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Three Views of Windsor Castle

Wenceslaus (Wenceslas, Vaclav) Hollar (1607-1677)

Etching

 

 

 

Three views of Windsor Castle : from the South S West, from the West South West and from the West by South.  Signed in the lower left foreground. W. Hollar delin & sculp. c1670, at which time he had an official position in the Court of King Charles II as 'Scenographer, or Designer of Prospects'.

The views occur in Elias Ashmole's Institution of the Order of the Garter, London 1672 and 1693, folded as page 132.

The image size is 380 x 300 mm (15 x 12 inches)

 

Detail

 

Wenceslaus Hollar was born in Prague in 1607. He had a strong inclination towards art, but was much impeded by his father, who intended him for the law. In 1627 he left Prague, spending time in various places in Germany, where he studied the art of etching. Here he met and joined the entourage of the Earl of Arundel, who had been sent ambassador to Vienna and who greatly admired Hollar's etching of Prague, which he saw in Cologne. After accompanying him to Vienna, Hollar returned to England with the Earl. His first etched plates of London scenes are dated 1637 (a View of Greenwich and the Courtyard of Arundel House).

Around 1639 he was appointed a teacher of drawing in the Royal Household, and a volume of sketches by the Prince Charles (later Charles II), to which Hollar gave the finishing touches, is still to be seen at the British Museum.

In 1642, at the beginning of the Civil Wars, the Earl of Arundel left for Antwerp, but Hollar continued to work in England, producing 67 plates in 1643 and 40 in 1644, in which year he took up arms in the Royalist cause, serving under the Marquis of Winchester at Basing House. His etchings of the execution of Lord Strafford, the trial of Archbishop Laud and other events related to the Civil Wars are historically important documents of the period. He was taken prisoner, but later escaped or was released, and rejoined Arundel in Antwerp, where he produced some 350 plates over the next six years, etching from sketches made in England.

He returned to England in 1652, etching plates for Dugdale's History of St Paul's, Ogilby's Vergil, and Stapleton's Juvenal. At the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, he was appointed 'Scenographer, or Designer of Prospects', though this apparently did little to help him financially, but he continued to produce historically important etchings, including views of the coronation of Charles II and of London before and after the Great Fire of 1666. During 1668-69, he accompanied Lord Henry Howard on an expedition to Tangiers, where he was employed in making sketches of the town and its fortifications.

 

'...it is his topographic work for which he is most notable - careful, perceptive work, freely and rapidly executed and, because he was both draughtsman and etcher, reliable as a record of what he saw. His views have a fluidity of line very different from the rigid formality that was shortly to follow.'  Ronald Russell Guide to British Topographical Prints (1979)

'If anyone want truth without pretention let him go to Hollar. If he want perfection of 'biting' and the precise degree of gradation required, let him also go to Hollar. If he want to live in the time illustrated, let him again go to Hollar...' Francis Seymour Haden, About Etching (1879).

'He was an etcher of the widest scope...and when faced with a congenial subject matter such as a muff or an English landscape produced results of remarkable beauty.' Antony Griffiths Prints and Printmaking (1980)

Price £820