ALBUM - NINETEENTH CENTURY


Commonplace book of Mary Ann Gwilt, containing some thirty watercolours, pen and ink and pencil drawings, including two fine Company School watercolours of the Taj Mahal, two pencil sketches of fonts in Hampshire by George Gwilt the Younger, "Ancient House in Camden Gloucestershire 1826" by the architect J. C. Buckler, the family home "on the division of the Isleworth and Twickenham roads" by her son Charles Edwin Gwilt, natural history (2), and landscapes, riddles with moving parts ("When is a man like a piece of wood?" and "She must have put my Lobster in this Cupboard!"), an illustrated account of the de-masting in a hurricane of the ship Bridgewater in 1830, an Indian painting on mica of a "native Dak-man" ("who goes on foot with the letters from one end of India to the other") and three Japanese paintings on rice paper with the request "kind friends are requested not to touch", interspersed with some fifty engravings (including William IV and Queen Adelaide in their Coronation robes) and miscellaneous writings, approximately 100 leaves, contemporary morocco gilit, upper cover, spine and first two leaves detached, worn, 4to, 1830s
|Provenance: Mary Ann Gwilt (neé Applegarth), bookplate. Mary Ann was the wife of the architect George Gwilt the younger (1775-1856), a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, and perhaps best known for his restoration of St Saviour, Southwark in the 1820's and 30's