Swell, The Seat of Sir Robert Atkyns, plate 371 from "The Ancient and Present State of Gloucestershire"

Swell, The Seat of Sir Robert Atkyns, plate 371 from "The Ancient and Present State of Gloucestershire"

Johannes Kip

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This print belongs to a set of views of Gloucestershire estates drawn and etched by Johannes Kip, who moved to England when William and Mary assumed the throne in 1688. He was one of several Dutch artists, printmakers and publishers who helped to establish a new tradition of English topographical printmaking. Kip’s bird’s-eye views describe the properties of gentry and minor nobles rather than princes and record the considerable expenditures that many landowners made in 1690s and early 1700s. Published after 1710, the prints record details of houses, courtyards, and gardens often with long allées of trees extending out across the property. Many of these late Baroque enhancements would soon be swept by a rising taste for picturesque landscape.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Swell, The Seat of Sir Robert Atkyns, plate 371 from "The Ancient and Present State of Gloucestershire"Swell, The Seat of Sir Robert Atkyns, plate 371 from "The Ancient and Present State of Gloucestershire"Swell, The Seat of Sir Robert Atkyns, plate 371 from "The Ancient and Present State of Gloucestershire"Swell, The Seat of Sir Robert Atkyns, plate 371 from "The Ancient and Present State of Gloucestershire"Swell, The Seat of Sir Robert Atkyns, plate 371 from "The Ancient and Present State of Gloucestershire"

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.