Scale
no scale
Inscribed
On verso in top left-hand corner, in pen and brown ink in a C18-19 hand, 3W47, and in centre, in pencil, in a C18-19 hand, Gard.
Signed and dated
c.1702-03
Medium and dimensions
Pen and brown ink, with grey wash, with grey ink and grey wash in places; fine pencil construction lines; faded double red ruled border round edge of sheet; 512 x 677
Hand
William Talman
Watermark
Strasbourg Lily/4WR/AJ; countermark: IHS/CDG
Notes
The proposal is for a courtyard house with a piano nobile raised on a three-quarter height ground floor. From the elevation of the principal front, at the bottom of the sheet (111/25), it can be assumed that a large, two-storey hall would have run back from the main front towards the rear, connecting with a saloon on the garden front (111/24). The principal apartments would have run along the flanking sides, shown at the top of the sheet (111/23). An alternative version of the rear elevation at Welbeck Abbey is reproduced in Wren Society, XVII, pl. 13, bottom. This has the Newcastle armorial crest, flanked by backward-facing crouching lions on the apex of the pediment, and the Newcastle motto on a scroll on the tympanum. It also has cigar-shaped vase finials on the central and outer pavilions, like those on the stable design at 111/47 (see Unidentified designs, 3).
Literature
Wren Society, XII, pl. 40; J. Harris, William Talman, 1982, p. 38, pl. 66.
Level
Drawing
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