Lot 264D email save

[BRETON, William F.] The Old Court House of 1707

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[Philadelphia: c. 1830]. Pen-and-ink and wash, on paper (157 x 200 mm). Unsigned. Condition: small hole in the lower right, smaller pinhole in the image, short edge tear. Provenance: Martin P. Snyder. an original work by breton of an image that appeared in watson's annals. When Breton began the process of preparing the illustrations for Watson's Annals, he "found that some of the early buildings discussed in Watson's manuscript were still standing. The Old Court House, for example, erected twenty-five years after the founding of the city, stood in the middle of Market Street, and with this he combined in one drawing the Friends' Meeting House, which had been removed years earlier from the adjacent corner" (Snyder). This pen-and-ink and wash drawing depicts that very scene and would appear as the illustration facing p. 294 in Watson's Annals. Similar watercolor studies of this view are found in both the Library Company and Philadelphia Athenaeum holdings of Breton originals, but this view more closely resembles the final product, with the upper story of the Meetinghouse is depicted with two windows in the present study and eventual lithograph, whereas the aforementioned studies each only have one. The differences between this work and the printed version are slight, most notably the horse and carriage, the child and dog, and mother and child in the foreground. Snyder, "William Breton, Nineteenth Century Philadelphia Artist" in PMHB, vol. 85., no. 2.

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