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New York City/ Boston/ Colonial History. CARWITHAM, John/ BOWLES & CARVER. [London: 1764 or later/ c. 1793-1832] A South-West View of the City of New York in North America. London. Printed for Bowles & Carvek, No. 69. St. Paul’s Church Yard. No. 35 at lower left. 11 ¾ 17 3/8 inches. [With:] A South-East View of the City of Boston in North America. Imprint as above. No. 34 at lower left. 11 ½ x 17 inches. Etchings & engravings on wove paper. Both with fine early hand color. Both professionally re-margined; lower left corner of New York view area including number in facsimile, a few mended but invisible tears top center; light tape residue on Boston view; overall, New York fair, Boston very good condition. Deak described the New York view offered here as “one of the most sought-after prints of colonial New York…” Similarly desirable is the Boston view, as both are among the precious few images we have of colonial American cities as seen prior to 1750. To have both of these important works available as a matching pair is yet more exceptional. The New York view combines important historical detail with drama as a large warship in the foreground fires its cannons and soldier rowing in long boats engage in an apparent military exercise. The steeples of churches of various denominations and ethnicities dominate the town’s skyline with that of Trinity Church at far left being the tallest. Deak gives the date of depiction as between 1724 and 1741 based on various architectural details. The city is seen here from the southwest, thus with the Hudson River in foreground. Both Deak and Worms state it was the first view of New York seen from the west. Carwitham likely based this view on William Burgis’ extremely rare view of 1717 (Deak no. 75). Carwitham also produced at roughly the same time as this view a plan of New York City that was never published, of which only three known examples survive; see Augustyn/ Cohen reference below. This is fourth state of the view with the Bowles & Carver imprint; Deak, however, noted that “the engraving is rare in each of the states…” The view of Boston displays the waterfront from South Battery to the North End from the vantage point of Castle Island and is dominated by Long Wharf in the center. In the background, left of Long Wharf, can be seen Boston peninsula’s dominant topographic feature--the three hills that led the Puritans to name the area “Trimountaine.” Today’s Beacon Hill is the only surviving remnant of these elevations. Farther to the left is Fort Hill located in present-day Roxbury. Otherwise, church steeples dominate the skyline in the view. Carwitham based this view on the unobtainably rare first state of the monumental 3-sheet 1723 view of Boston by William Burgis, A South East View of the Great Town of Boston in New England in America, which is generally considered to be the earliest printed view of Boston. It is known in only two examples. Carwitham, however, updated the Burgis view: “When John Carwitham prepared the engraving, he added the Old South Meeting House and Hollis Street Meeting house, both built in 1731. The spire of Christ Church seen in the Burgis view -- then an architectural projection rather than a reality -- was retained by Carwitham even though the spire would not be built until about 1740” (Deak). Though depicting Boston from c. 1731-36 and likely engraved around this time, the view was not published until around 1764. Carwitham's views of New York, Boston and Philadelphia are apparently among the "lost engravings" associated with an unpublished history of North America by William Byrd II. A number of the plates evidently intended for this work are a part of the Richard Rawlinson Collection of copperplates, which were given to the Bodleian Library in Oxford after Rawlinson's death in 1755. Other plates were acquired, revised and issued by Carrington Bowles, including the three aforementioned views. As no example of the Boston view pre-dating the Carrington Bowles imprint survives, the first state of Carwitham's view of Boston has to date been unknown, although Deak surmised that the pre-Carrington Bowles state of the view existed, based upon the existence of a single example of the pre-Carrington Bowles state of the Manhattan view by Carwitham, currently in the collection of the Library of Congress—see Augustyn/ Cohen reference below. Both views offered here are in the fourth and final state (per Stokes) on wove paper with the Bowles & Carver imprints, with numbers instead of Roman numerals at lower left, and with changes in their titles. According to the British Library, Bowles and Carver were in business from 1793 to 1832 (https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/term/BIOG61393). New York View: Deak, Picturing America, no. 84; cf. Augustyn/ Cohen, Manhattan in Maps, pp. 57-59; Worms/ Baynton-Williams, British Map Engravers, pp. 128-29 Boston View: Deak no. 86; Stokes and Haskell, American Historical Prints, p. 14; Winsor, Memorial History of Boston, vol. II pp. 531-32. Useful background on the Burgis view is found in Boston Prints and Printmakers, in essays by John Reps on early Boston maps and views and by Richard Holman on the career and works of Burgis.
Price: $9,500.00