William Henry
Bartlett, (born in London, 26 March 1809; died at sea off Malta, 13 Sept
1854) was an English draughtsman, active also in the Near East,
Continental Europe and North America. He was a prolific artist and an
intrepid traveler. His work became widely known through numerous
engravings after his drawings published in his own and other writers'
topographical books. His primary concern was to extract the picturesque
aspects of a place and by means of established pictorial conventions to
render 'lively impressions of actual sights', as he wrote in the preface
to The Nile Boat (London, 1849). Bartlett's several views of Scotland bear
the date of 1837, and as Nathaniel Parker Willis stated, "Bartlett could
select his point of view so as to bring prominently into his sketch the
castle or the cathedral, which history or antiquity had allowed". Most
views contain some ruin or element of the past including many scenes of
churches, abbeys, cathedrals and castles. The interest in these engravings
today is as much for the quality of the rendering and presentation of the
architecture of the period as it is for the representation of the
landscape. |