The Hampton Court Albums of Catherine the Great

In the early 2000s, two albums of drawings of Hampton Court Palace by Capability Brown’s draughtsman, John Spyers, were discovered in the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg. These are now considered one of the most complete visual records of an historic landscape ever captured before photography. They were purchased by Catherine the Great in 1783 but lay forgotten for over 200 years. This book reproduces all 149 drawings and 14 additional pencil drawings discovered during restoration works for an exhibition at the Hampton Court Palace in 2016.
From a reproduction point of view, this project is exemplar. All originals were digitally photographed in St Petersburg by the same hand, allowing for a high degree of consistency during the subsequent colour reproduction stage in London. A precise, delicate but incisive colour separation was imperative to correctly and faithfully reproduce the nuances within the mostly highly finished drawings. The majority of which are in watercolour over pen and brown ink, but there are also drawings in pen and ink alone, in chalk, sanguine and pencil.
Published by Fontanka and designed by Daniel Chehade, with specially commissioned marbling by Katherine Brett. Photography by Pavel Demidov. Printed by Balto Print, Lithuania.
144 pages, hardback, 32 x 23 cm, 175 illustrations
ISBN: 978-1906257-22-4