John Le Keux (1783 – 1846) after Frederick Mackenzie (1788 – 1854)
Sidney College from the Master’s Garden (1845)
Hand-coloured engraving
12 x 15 cm
Published by Rudolph Ackermann (1764 – 1834).
An engraving of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. The College was founded in 1596 under the terms of the will of Frances Sidney, Countess of Sussex, wife of Thomas Radclyffe, 3rd Earl of Sussex, and named after its foundress.
Frederick Mackenzie (circa 1788 – 1854) was a British watercolourist and architectural draughtsman. He first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1804, and contributed eleven drawings between that year and 1828. He contributed to the Society of Painters in Water Colours exhibitions from 1813, becoming an associate in 1822, and a full member the following year. From 30 November 1831 until, his death he was treasurer to the society. In later life Mackenzie was no longer commissioned to illustrate books.
John Le Keux was a British engraver. When working as an apprentice to his father, a pewter manufacturer, he began engraving pewter, and trained as an engraver. He was then apprenticed to the noted engraver James Basire, and went on to produce engravings for the architectural publications of John Britton, Augustus Welby Pugin, John Preston Neale, and others. He produced various engravings of Oxford and Cambridge colleges.
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; a couple of spots and some age toning.
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