Wenceslaus Hollar

Purchased from Alfred Scharf, London, 17 January 1956, by the previous owner, and given by them to the present owner some 25 years ago

Laid down. The surface somewhat dirty, with various minor abrasions, water stains and repaired tears at edges, but ink and wash still very legible.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

This previously unrecorded view of Old St. Paul's Cathedral, London, was drawn by the Bohemian artist Wenceslaus Hollar between 1656 and 1658, just a few years before the medieval building was destroyed in the Great Fire of London.  It is the preparatory study, in reverse, for one of a highly important series of fourteen prints (fig. 1), etched by Hollar after his own drawings, which constitute the only detailed visual record of how the ancient Cathedral looked, inside and out.¹  Until now, only two other drawings by Hollar relating to these prints were known, neither of them exact preparatory studies for one of the final prints, so the discovery of this working drawing for the project is of immense significance.²

Hollar received the commission for his prints of Old St. Paul's in 1656, from the eminent antiquarian William Dugdale (1605-1686), to illustrate the latter's monumental publication, The History of St Pauls Cathedral in London from its Foundation untill these Times, which appeared two years later.  This book was one of an astonishingly influential and varied series of works written by Dugdale, which ranged in subject from the antiquities of Warwickshire (1656), through the embanking and draining of the Fens (1662) to a definitive account of the Baronage of England (1675-6).  Dugdale himself was a fascinating figure, not only a meticulous scholar and historian but also a staunch Royalist during the Civil War period; he once single-handedly confronted the Parliamentarian forces at Warwick Castle, and fought beside the King at the Battle of Edgehill.

As he described in his introduction, Dugdale embarked on the St. Paul's project thanks to his chance discovery that hampers full of documents from the Cathedral's early archives, many dating from the 14th and 15th centuries, were mouldering in the cellar of a certain John Reading, the man Oliver Cromwell had appointed to supervise property confiscated from the Deans and Chapters of England's Cathedrals (which included the building, contents and archives of St. Paul's).  Dugdale was clearly moved to try to save the archives for posterity, and this antiquarian instinct, combined with the concern that he (and many others) felt regarding the future of the building itself, motivated him to undertake his great account of the Cathedral - one of the first detailed studies of a single building ever published.

By the early 17th century, the ancient Cathedral, which was begun in 1083 and completed in 1240, was in very poor condition.  The original tall steeple had collapsed following a lightning strike in 1561, and other parts of the structure were unstable.  In the 1620s and again in 1631 Royal Commissions were established to effect a restoration, the second of which resulted in the addition of Inigo Jones' fine but short-lived classicising portico and various other repairs, but the main underlying structural problems were not resolved, and the subsequent maltreatment of the building by the Parliamentarian authorities made things even worse.  By 1656, the nave of the church had been converted for use as stabling for soldiers' horses, the choir stalls had been removed, monuments defaced and the pavement torn up, part of the crypt and a side chapel had been leased out to a wine merchant and a baker respectively, and the removal of protective scaffolding had resulted in the total collapse of the roof of the south transept.  Given that various influential figures on the Parliamentarian side actually advocated the total destruction of all such grand places of worship, Dugdale's fear for the very survival of Old St. Paul's was totally justified.  Yet although the text of his book describes exactly all these depredations, in Hollar's illustrations they are conspicuously absent, and the church is miraculously restored to its original condition.  In effect, Dugdale's remarkable book is at once a precise account of the turbulent history of the Cathedral, a moving plea for its salvation, and a manifesto and blueprint for its careful restoration.

In the Prague-born draughtsman and engraver Wenceslaus Hollar, Dugdale found a willing and accomplished collaborator.³ Hollar had come to England in 1636, as a result of meeting the Earl of Arundel who was passing through Cologne, where the artist was then working, on an ambassadorial mission to the Prague court of the Emperor Rudolf II. Hollar accompanied Arundel on his journey, and then returned with him to England. When his patron went into exile in Antwerp in the early 1640s, Hollar followed, but he was back in London by 1652 and remained there until his death. A very prolific engraver, Hollar produced illustrations for five of Dugdale's publications, but the fourteen plates that he executed for The History of St Pauls Cathedral are perhaps the most historically significant.

The emergence of this preparatory drawing also sheds light on the artist's working method.  Hollar is not renowned for his mastery of sophisticated perspective, and it is revealing to see him using here a painstakingly constructed network of incised lines as the basis for his depiction of the forms of the architecture, which are more freely drawn in pen and ink and elaborated with finely applied wash.

1. R. Pennington, A descriptive catalogue of the etched work of Wenceslaus Hollar 1607-1677, Cambridge 1982, pp. 177-181, cat. nos. 1016-1030; the print after the present drawing cat. no. 1022
2. The other documented drawings by Hollar relating to the St. Paul's prints are in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (see David Blayney Brown, Ashmolean Museum Oxford, Catalogue of the Collection of Drawings...vol. IV, Oxford 1982, pp. 84-5, no. 138, reproduced pl. VI), and formerly in the collection of Iolo Williams (reproduced in The Connoisseur, XCII, no. 387, November 1933, p. 318). The Oxford drawing is a general view of the Cathedral from the North-East, very close in composition to the corresponding engraved view (Pennington no. 1019); although the drawing is indented for transfer, it is in the same direction as the print, and the viewpoint is also slightly different, so the exact relationship between print and drawing remains unclear.  The second drawing is a small sketch showing one of the doors in the Choir screen. Though not a preparatory study as such, the sketch, which is inscribed in Hollar's hand, records an architectural detail that appears in the print of The Exterior of the Choir from the West (Pennington 1024).    
3. For an excellent full account, from which much of the information in the present note is drawn, see Marion Roberts, Dugdale and Hollar, History Illustrated, Newark and London 2002.