The Sandrock Hotel at Niton, Isle of Wight Regency Resort View, 1827

An uncolored line engraving of the Sandrock Hotel at Niton, Isle of Wight, drawn and engraved by George Brannon and published at Wotton on the first of June 1827. The hotel is shown as a long low house with a deep veranda across the front, standing in lawns and shrubberies with mature trees to either side and the ground falling away toward the sea. Figures on the grass and a carriage drive bring the building to life as a working resort rather than a private house. The Sandrock took its name and its trade from the mineral spring close by, and Brannon has engraved it as a place of resort, comfortable, sheltered and discreetly fashionable, in the fine uncolored copper line used throughout the views in this volume.

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.

Regency hotel views are scarce as a subject in their own right, because the buildings were rarely thought worth a plate of their own. This one survives because the Sandrock stood at the head of the island's small spa trade, taking the visitors who came for the chalybeate water and the sheltered air of the Undercliff. That trade faded as the Victorian fashion turned to sea bathing, which gives the engraving the documentary interest collectors of hospitality and spa history look for. It makes an apt framed piece for a hotel, a guest bedroom or a dining room hung with other views of resorts and watering places.

Even age toning. Marked handling soiling along the bottom, right and top 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.