Buck (Samuel and Nathaniel)

, , c.1738.
the original drawing for the left half, or western section, of the panoramic engraving by Samuel and Nathaniel Buck of ‘The South Prospect of Dover in the County of Kent’, which was published on 26th March, 1739. This self-contained cmposition encompasses the coastal view from Arch Cliff, now Aycliffe, to the medieval harbour mouth, centred on the harbour pool itself, with the famous white cliffs of Dover delicately forming a backdrop. The drawing is constructed in two distinct media, the coastal topography and an array of buildings are executed in pencil, while all the ships and smaller vessels, and the water of the English Channel are finely performed in monochrome ink and wash.

The brothers Samuel Buck (1696-1779) and Nathaniel Buck (fl.1724-1759) toured the British Isles over a period of 34 years, making hundreds of topographical drawings, of which relatively few survive, of which 87 were translated into a series of large prospects for ‘Cities, Sea-ports and Capital Towns’. This was apart from their more extensive series of over 400 ‘Antiquities’, smaller engravings of castles, monasteries and other mouments and ruins, all of which combine to form an invaluable visual record of pre-industrial Britain..