Long View of London

Wenceslaus Hollar etched his famous Long View of London in Antwerp where it was published in 1647.  The panorama was published in several sheets, each with a particular part of the city.  Hollar etched the Long View from one particular point.  It appears to be from the top of St. Saviour’s tower in Southwark. When compared to a modern map, the alignments of the landmarks aren’t true from that point of the tower.  The panorama contains some characteristics of an accurate survey, but also (perhaps primarily) of an aesthetic composition.  So, basically, Hollar wanted it to look prettTwo of his preliminary sketches have been known since they showed up at a Sotheby’s sale (which is an art auction) in 1931.

The other, less well-known view, looks out over the rooftops of east Southwark towards Greenwich.  These two do resemble the actual lie of the land, but only cover narrow segments of the whole prospect.  There were probably similar drawings with a view between St Paul’s and the Tower.            Now there has come to light a panorama of London drawn by Hollar in 1638, almost a decade before the Long View. When placed side by side the two views are seen to be contiguous, both north and south banks running smoothly across from one sheet to the other.  There is even, in the curious duplication of the line marking the north shore in both sketches, some evidence that the two have actually been cut from what was originally a continuous panorama on a single sheet of paper. Comparison of this panorama with the Long View shows that it’s not the final sketch.  But shows it’s one stage of his thinking about the difficult problem of how to best arrange the elements in the very wide-angled view.  It’s likely the drawings record the actual state of the London scene in 1638, and therefore, are more reliable than the Long View of 1647 etched three years later and after he left England.