Sketches and Hints on Landscape Gardening. Collected from Designs and Observations Now in the Possession of the Different Noblemen and Gentlemen, for Whose Use they were Originally Made. The Whole Tending to Establish Fixed Principles in the Art of Laying out Ground [with original watercolour landscape design]

London: Printed by W. Bulmer & Co., Shakespeare Printing Office, and sold by J. & J. Boyden, Shakespeare Gallery, and by G. Nicol, Bookseller to His Majesty, Pall-Mall, 1794. Oblong 4to. (11 1/4 x 15 inches). Half-title, xvi, 83 pp., (3), untrimmed. 10 hand-coloured aquatint engravings (1 folding, 3 double-page), each with one or more overslips, and 6 aquatint plates, uncoloured (4 with one or more overslips), all as issued together with an original waterclour of a landscape scene portraying Rivenhall Place with 2 overslips, matted. Watercolour dimensions: 8 3/8 x 5 7/16 inches. Original vellum spine over marbled boards, with half green morocco box. Watercolour in a matching half green morocco box.

An extraordinary copy of the first and rarest of Repton's great works on landscape gardening, untrimmed in marbled boards; together with an original Repton watercolour of Rivenhall Place.

This outstanding copy of Sketches and Hints on Landscape Gardening is accompanied by an original watercolour drawing of Riverhall Place, the seat of Baron Western in Essex, and a storied estate whose history goes back to the Domesday Book of 1086 when it was recorded as belonging to Earl Eustance of Boulogne. The estate passed through several families before it was purchased by Thomas Western, a wealthy iron founder and contractor to Charles II's navy, in 1692. The watercolour served as the model for the engraving appearing opposite p. 4 in Humphrey Repton's great book on landscape gardening. Repton writes: 'The present character of Rivenhall is evidently gloomy and sequestered, with the appearance of being low and damp. The interference of art, in former days, has, indeed, rendered the improvement and restoration of its natural beauties a work of some labour; yet by availing ourselves of those natural beauties, and displacing some of the incumbrances of art, the character of the place may be made picturesque and cheerful, and the situation, which is not really damp, may be so managed as to lose that appearance. The first object is to remove the stables, and all the trees and bushes, in the low meadow, which may then with ease be convereted into a pleasing piece of water, in the front of the house.' Humphry Repton was the main successor to Lancelot 'Capability' Brown as an improver of grounds and the first person to adopt the term 'landscape gardener.' He was particularly noted for his 'Red Books.' These were produced for each individual client and were made up from manuscript descriptions of his proposed improvements that were bound with Repton's own watercolour drawings, with his proposed alterations displayed on an overslip. Sketches and Hints on Landscape Gardening is comprised of extracts from the 'Red Books' of 57 houses which Repton had been called upon to 'improve'. A list of these houses, their location and their owners is given in a valuable two-page list towards the front of this volume. The work is broken down into various chapters: 'Concerning Buildings', 'Concerning Water', 'Concerning Approaches', etc. In each chapter Repton selects the relevant section from each 'Red Book' that is helpful to the point he is trying to make. The work ends with an intriguing list of sixteen 'Sources of pleasure in Landscape Gardening' and William Wyndham's letter to Repton in support of his theories: 'Places are not to be laid out with a view to their appearance in a picture, but to their uses, and the enjoyment of them in real life, and their conformity to those purposes is that which constitutes their true beauty: with this view gravel walks, and neat mown lawns [...] are in perfect good taste, and infinitely more conformable to the principles which form the basis of our pleasure in these instances, than the docks and thistles, and litter and disorder, that may make a much better figure in a picture.' The beautiful watercolour accompanying this copy is an example of similar models which Repton included in the 'Red Books' given to his cleints. Both in the watercolour and in the printed book, Repton makes extensive use of movable flaps or 'slides' to illuminate the improvements he is trying to create by showing the property before his designs (with the flap down) and after, with the flaps lifted. The quality of the waterolour is exceptional, making this unique copy an extraordinary opportunity to see the artist's process as he moved from initial plan to its completion.

Abbey Scenery 388; Archer 280.1; ESTC t073696; Henrey III, 1269; RIBA III, 405; Tooley 400.