Topographers

It was Hollar who introduced to England the technique of watercolour wash over pencil or ink !ine drawing. and in England that it developed. in three rather different directions: free. romantic painting: more factual topographie recording: semi-formal architectural perspective rendering. Hollar's friend the 'gentleman artist' Prancis Place (1647-1728), whose manner is less painstaking and mechanical. may be more justly rated as the forerunner. a generation ahead. ofthe great Eng!ish school that flourished from about 1750. The topographers' technique was not so much watereolour painting (which involves drawing mainly with the brush) as the 'tinting·. as it was ealled. of drawings already completed and perhaps shaded in pencil. chalk or ink. The palette was restricted. less from choiee than from the complete lack of eommereially prepared pigments; the artist had to grind and mix his own. In early days the tones were not used for modelling; the colour is local rather than atmospherie; !ittle attention is given to aerial perspective or to surface texture. Throughout the eighteenth and weil into the nineteenth century. dozens ofitinerant topographers were touring Britain and overseas with their folding stools. sketchbooks. water bottles and !ittle bags ofpigment. Many ofthem worked for print pub!ishers; from about 1750 the process was mainly aquatint; that iso etching in fairly few and flat tones. printed in two or three oil colours app!ied by hand to the plate. perhaps finished with a few touches of watercolour. The preliminary !ine might be in 'soft-ground' etehing. which closely resembles (and in a sense is) peneil work. Buyers of the prints were not thereby always accurately informed about the subject matter; the more romantically inclined artists favoured what Ruskin was to call 'an arrangement of remembrances' .