Etchings of English Scenery. No. 4.

Sketchbook containing around 40 drawings, created by British naval officer Aiskew Paffard Hollis (1764–1844) from the 1820s to the early 1840s. Includes are studies of trees; archaeological studies, featuring Stonehenge and the ruins of Netley Abbey in Hampshire; a figure study of the gardener’s wife at St John’s House at Ryde on the Isle of Wight; and landscapes. The landscapes included various locations on the Isle of Wight, views of the grounds at Stourhead in Wiltshire and numerous Lake District subjects, as well as an imagined view of the Clifton Suspension Bridge (completed before construction of the bridge was complete) and sketches of the Old Keeper’s Cottage in Greenwich Park and the church of St Mary the Virgin in Lewisham. It appears as though some pages have come loose from the sketchbook in the past.

All of the drawings appear to date from the period after Hollis’s retirement from active service in 1820 and record his travels around Britain, including visits to the Isle of Wight, Wiltshire and the Lake District.