A View of part of the Garden at Hall-Barn, near Beaconsfield in Buckinghamshire, a seat of Edmund Waller Esquire / Vue d’une Partie du Jardin a Hall-Barn, dans la Comté de Bucks, appertanant a Edmund Waller Ecuyer

Location

Country: Peru
City: Lima
Place: British Embassy

Well-dressed men and women enjoy the immaculately landscaped gardens of Hall Barn in Buckinghamshire. The gardens include trees planted in uniform rows, rectangular lakes and sharply-defined path ways.

The male figure in the foreground, to the right of the composition, may be Edmund Waller (1652-1700), the occupant of Hall Barn at the time this print was published. Mentioned in lettering below the image of the print, Waller was descended from a 17th-century poet and politician, also named Edmund Waller (1606-1687). The Waller family had purchased Hall Barn, Beaconsfield, in 1624 and it remained in the family until 1832, when it was sold to Sir Gore Ousley. The property changed hands two more times before it was purchased by Sir Edward Levy-Lawson in 1881–82. In 1903 Sir Edward was created Baron Burnham of Hall Barn, Beaconsfield. Hall Barn remains the seat of the current Lord Burnham today.

William Woollett was the son of an innkeeper, from Maidstone, Kent. In 1750 he was apprenticed to John Tinney at the Goldsmith’s Company. By 1759, he was studying at St Martin’s Lane Academy. Three years later he married Hannah but, after their five children died in infancy, Hannah also died in 1770. Woollett was later remarried to Elizabeth. His earliest prints are of country houses and gardens, after his own designs. He was first employed by John Boydell in 1760. His engraving after Richard Wilson’s ‘The Destruction of the Children of Niobe’ won him considerable critical acclaim and, as a result, Alan Ramsay invited him to engrave his portrait of George III. Woollett reportedly died ‘from the effect of an accident, unskilfully treated’.

Places

England, Hall Barn, Buckinghamshire

Subjects

urn, topography, landscape C18th, tree, duck, lake, man, woman, 18th century costume, dress, path, garden, country house/mansion

Materials & Techniques

engraving, coloured engraving

Artist

William Woollett (1735 - 1785)

Title

A View of part of the Garden at Hall-Barn, near Beaconsfield in Buckinghamshire, a seat of Edmund Waller Esquire / Vue d’une Partie du Jardin a Hall-Barn, dans la Comté de Bucks, appertanant a Edmund Waller Ecuyer

Date

published July 1760

Medium

Coloured engraving

Acquisition

Purchased from Frank T Sabin, October 1961

GAC number

5621