Fowler (William)

a rare, separately published plate on one of the two favoured subjects, patterned floors and stained glass windows, of the antiquary and artist, William Fowler (1761-1832), illustrating the full magnificence of the Roman mosaic floor at Littlecote House. It was first discovered in 1727 by the steward of the estate, and carefully revealed by 1730. Known as the ‘Orpheus’ mosaic, it also features Bacchus and Apollo in a display of pagan exuberance thought to date from the time of Julian the Apostate, around AD 361-363, as the centrepiece of a place of worship for the Roman population in central southern Britain at the time. Its relatively quick decline is thought to have had more to do with Theodosian legislation against paganism, around AD 400, than the withdrawal of the Romans over the decades to follow. Fowler was from the Lincolnshire town of Winterton, from where he issued similar plates of other Roman and later medieval tessellated and mosaic floors, as well as stained-glass church windows, all beautifully observed and reproduced in detailed hand-colouring, which he issued in very limited numbers between 1798 and 1804,

engraving on wove paper, in original hand-colouring heightened with gum-arabic, 715 x 470mm. (28 1/8 x 18 1/2 in), a repaired split along an original fold in the lower portion, trimmed within the upper platemark, outside the printed area, with a few repaired tears at the upper sheet edge, a small section of paper replaced replaced in the blank lower left corner, probably from where the folding sheet was once bound,