31 Original Watercolours

Additional information

A very rare collection of 31 original watercolours, and ink note, by or possibly after William Gilpin In half calf, over worn marbled boards, new tips, some blind tooling, edges rubbed. Respined old invisibly laid down, decorative gilt tooling, gilt titles to black calf label. Internally, later blue marbled endpapers, 31 leaves of original watercolours, (18 of which are in full colour, remainder in pen and ink gray/black or sepia), (29 being of a topographical nature, with the remaining 2 being coloured armourial? plus a few leaves of MS ink text copied from Pennant's Tours. The water colours are nearly all ovals, mostly with ms. captions. 6 are of Welsh subjects. There are several un-captioned which could be anywhere. First editions of Gilpin's tours start in 1789 (Highlands of Scotland) and finish with Picturesque Beauty (1792). There are later editions, of course. But the watermarks on the paper look to me to be 17 on some sheets and 94 on others. So I believe it highly unlikely they are "by" Gilpin as the watermark post-dates the books - not impossible but unlikely - but they are by a very talented hand and of a high quality.