Newport High Street and Town Hall, Isle of Wight, Dedicated Plate, 1821

An original engraved view of the High Street at Newport, Isle of Wight, drawn on the spot and engraved by George Brannon, published on the first of August 1821. The classical town hall stands at the left with its portico and colonnade, shopfronts run down both sides of the broad street, and townspeople, a cart and a dog animate the middle distance. Beneath the image Brannon engraved a full dedication to Sir Leonard Thomas Worsley Holmes of Westover, Baronet, Member of Parliament and Recorder of the ancient borough, in which "This View of the High Street is most respectfully inscribed" by the engraver himself. The lettering makes this one of the best documented sheets in the series, naming both the street and the patron, and it is among the very few plates in the book to show commercial island life rather than scenery.

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.

Newport was and remains the county town of the Isle of Wight, and this High Street is the best early engraved record of its shopping center before Victorian rebuilding. The town hall shown here is the building John Nash designed, completed in 1816 and still standing as the Guildhall, so the plate dates precisely to the first years of its life. Town views from the series are the ones island collectors chase first, since the scenery plates survive in far greater numbers. It hangs well in a dining room or an entrance hall, particularly framed alongside the Carisbrooke Castle plate from the same volume.

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

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