Blackgang Chine: the Great Chasm in the Island Cliffs, Brannon, 1828

An uncolored copper engraving of Blackgang Chine, Isle of Wight, drawn and engraved by George Brannon and published at Wotton on the second of June 1828. The plate looks into the great dark chasm cut back into the cliff, the ravine opening in layered sandstone with the stream threading down the floor of it and the sky showing narrow at the head. Tiny figures on the shore at the foot of the cliff carry the scale, and they are essential: without them the drop would read as a quarter of its real height. Brannon works the shadowed rock almost solid with crossed burin lines and leaves the sea and the sky open, so that the chine appears as a black wound in a pale coast.

The view belongs to Vectis Scenery, George Brannon's series of original and select views of the Isle of Wight, printed and published by the engraver himself at Wotton Common on the island in 1829 and sold by the principal local booksellers. Brannon drew the subjects on the spot and cut the copper plates himself, so draughtsman and engraver are one man throughout. The volume's own advertisement leaf describes a first series of twenty-eight views with a map and letter-press, with a further twenty views issued separately as a Sequel. The technique is line engraving on copper. The views were issued uncolored, as line engravings on white paper, and this impression is uncolored.

Blackgang was the most famous of the Isle of Wight chines and the one every nineteenth century visitor was taken to see, long before the Victorian fantasy gardens and the amusement park grew up at its head. The chine has retreated steadily with coastal erosion and the view engraved here no longer exists in this form, which makes the early plates of it the principal record of its scale. Dramatic cliff and chasm subjects hang strongly on their own: this one takes a dark frame well and holds a wall above a fireplace. It sits naturally with the Freshwater and Scratchell's Bay plates from the same series.

Light uneven toning, browner towards the edges. Marked handling soiling along the bottom, right and top edges. Scattered foxing in the margin. All four corners complete.

This is an original antique print, not a modern reproduction. This item is sold unframed.