Jun 07, 2017 - Sale 2450

Sale 2450 - Lot 388

Price Realized: $ 3,250
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 5,000 - $ 7,500
POWNALL, THOMAS, after. Group of six engraved views from Scenographia Americana. Strong impressions on heavy laid paper, approximately 16 1/2x23 inches each sheet size, wide margins; sheets toned with moderate degree of foxing, plate 3 (Pakepsey) with small loss to lower left margin. London: Bowles, Sayer, Jefferys, Bowles, Parker, [1768]

Additional Details

Rare suite of engravings originally issued in 1761 with the title "Six Remarkable Views in the Provinces of New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, in North America." plates comprising: A View in Hudson's River of the Entrance of what is called the Topan Sea. A View of the Falls on the Passaick, or Second River, in the Province of New Jersey. A View in Hudson's River of Pakepsey of the Catts-Kill Mountains. A View of the Great Cohoes Falls, on the Mohawk River. A View of Bethlem, the Great Moravian Settlement in the Province of Pennsylvania. A Design to Represent the Beginning and Completion of an American Settlement or Farm.

Rarely found as a matching group, these picturesque tableaux were incorporated into "Scenographia Americana", one of the scarcest and most beautifully illustrated works of British Colonial America. The 28-plate series of North American landscape and topography is described by Stokes as an "important and very rare series of prints", with no complete copies appearing at auction in the past 30 years. As an agent of the British Empire Pownall traveled the northeast creating "sketches on the spot" of notable places, later collaborating with Paul Sandby, a founding member of the Royal Academy of Arts, to produce the finished works from which these engravings are taken.