Brannon's Bonchurch: Thatched Cottage in a Sunken Island Lane, 1829

An uncolored copper engraving of Bonchurch, Isle of Wight, drawn and engraved by George Brannon and published at Wotton Common on the first of June 1829. A thatched cottage sits at the bend of a sunken lane with its chimney stack and porch picked out in fine line, poultry scratching in the road, a low wall and garden planting, and the bare shoulder of the down rising behind the roof. It is the most domestic subject in the series and the most purely picturesque: no castle, no cliff, just the kind of island cottage the Regency traveler was taught to admire. Brannon engraved thatch particularly well, laying the straw in short curved strokes so that the roof reads soft against the hard lines of the masonry.

This sheet is one of the plates of Vectis Scenery, the island views that George Brannon drew, engraved and published from his own house at Wotton Common in the Isle of Wight, the 1829 issue. Brannon worked without an intermediary: he made the drawing on the spot, cut the copper himself and sold the result through the island booksellers, which is unusual and is part of why the series ran for more than fifty years. The plates carry their own earlier publication dates because each view was first issued on its own. The technique is copper-plate line engraving. The views were issued uncolored, as line engravings on white paper, and this impression is uncolored.

Bonchurch lies in the Undercliff beneath Saint Boniface Down, sheltered enough to grow myrtle out of doors, and it became a retreat for writers and painters later in the century. This plate shows it before any of that, as a working hamlet of thatch and stone. Cottage subjects are the ones interior buyers reach for first, since they carry none of the formality of a country seat and sit easily in a kitchen, a bedroom or a cottage hallway. Grouped with the Godshill and Shorwell plates from the same volume it forms a trio of island villages that reads as one picture.

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

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