Joseph Constantine Stadler (1755 – 1828) after William Westall (1781 – 1850)

Jesus College, Cambridge, from the Close (1815)

Hand-coloured aquatint

24 x 29.5 cm

Published by Rudolph Ackermann (1764 – 1834).

An engraving of Jesus College, foregrounded by trees, the River Cam, and grazing cattle.

Joseph Constantine Stadler was a prolific German émigré engraver of images after his contemporaries – here, 18th-century English landscape painter and diarist Joseph Farington. Stadler”s engravings are wide-ranging in subject matter and include landscapes, seascapes and portraits, as well as military, sporting and decorative subjects. Stadler was employed by the leading print publisher of the time, John Boydell. Stadler lived in Knightsbridge when he died at the age of 73.

William Westall was a British landscape artist. He was born in Hertford and enrolled at the Royal Academy schools in 1799. He later became the draughtsman for a voyage to Australia and the South Seas. After being shipwrecked, he travelled to Canton in China and to India, staying in Bombay for several months. He returned to England in 1805 but later set off for Madeira and Jamaica. He became a member of the Society of Painters in Water Colours (1811) and an associate of the Academy (1812). Following a mental breakdown, he regularly visited the Lake District and published ‘Views of the Valley and Vale of Keswick’ (1820). His series of aquatints of the Thames, the great universities, and England’s public schools for Ackermann are among his most popular works.

Rudolph Ackermann was an Anglo-German bookseller, inventor, lithographer, publisher and businessman. In 1795 he established a print-shop and drawing-school at 96 Strand. Here Ackermann set up a lithographic press and began a trade in prints. He later began to manufacture colours and thick carton paper for landscape and miniature painters. Within three years the premises had become too small and he moved to 101 Strand, in his own words “four doors nearer to Somerset House”, the seat of the Royal Academy of Arts. Between 1797 and 1800 Ackermann rapidly developed his print and book publishing business, encompassing many different genres including topography, caricature, portraits, transparencies and decorative prints.

Condition: good. Some age toning.

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