Title: Designs on the Landscape: Paul and Thomas Sandby in North Britain
Abstract:In 1749, the architect John Gwynn published a short Essay on Design, promoting the wide application of its principles and their manual expression in drawing. Together with the publication of drawing m...In 1749, the architect John Gwynn published a short Essay on Design, promoting the wide application of its principles and their manual expression in drawing. Together with the publication of drawing manuals and texts on perspective, or the marketing of optical viewing aids and devices, often with impressive technical names, Gwynn’s pamphlet addressed a growing fascination with the practical uses and possibilities of design. It was a modern, rational means of organising and planning the world, of (re)ordering society as well as the environment. Design, as promoted by Gwynn, offered a way of safeguarding the country from the anarchic forces of disorder that had a few years earlier, with the Jacobite rising of 1745, fomented revolt and civil war. In a list of ‘generous and elevated Sentiments’ deserving of commemoration, Gwynn recommended ‘The Suppression of an unnatural Rebellion, the Triumph of Clemency over Faction, a Check put to the Progress of Ambition, the complete Union of this long-divided Island, and the undoubted Sovereignty of the Sea asserted by the British Flag’.Read More