Charlecote House – A Bird’s-eye View of Charlecote Park (1696)

This is a rather interesting bird’s-eye view of Charlecote Park from a perspective which is commonplace now, but which was a little less usual at the time, although some landowners liked being able to see the extent of their land and the grandeur of their properties. The painting is located in the Grand Hall of the building and it’s thought to have been painted in around 1696. The gardens have changed somewhat as this formal style, which I rather like, was removed by Capability Brown in the 1760s and then changed again in the 1820s. The artwork has been credited to the Dutch artist Jan Stevens (?-1722) as he painted numerous other artworks in this style, but there’s no evidence that he actually painted this one. But, in the absence of any other information, it might as well be attributed to him. I’m not sure that’s how an art historian would think, but I’m not an art historian so that solves that one.

Here’s a better image of the house as it once looked. It shows the core Elizabethan house built by Sir Thomas Lucy I in the 1550s, before the significant Victorian alterations undertaken by George Hammond Lucy and his wife Mary Elizabeth from the 1820s onwards.