Dodd (Robert) After.

a beautiful reminder of the rural fringes that lingered during the accelerating urban expansion of London in the Georgian era, depicting a group of farm labourers, male and female, in Highbury Fields, raking hay into stacks, loading a large wagon, or resting their scythes and pitchforks as they slake their thirst, while behind them promenade in leisurely contrast a more gentrified group of figures, no doubt residents of the newly built, and imposing terraces of villas, the nearer ones of Highbury Place, running north to south, developed by the landowner, John Dawes, with the builder, John Spiller, in the 1770s, stretching down towards the distant terraces of Canonbury Place, running west to east, the background dipping away to reveal only the dome of St Paul’s and the spires of various churches in the City,

aquatint, printed in warm black/brown tones, 390 x 530 mm. (15 3/8 x 20 7/8 in), trimmed within the plate mark with the loss of the artist’s dedication to ‘the Ladies and Gentlemen Inhabitants’, and of the publishers’ imprint, but comfortably outside the image and main title, a few barely discernible printer’s creases, though a short one from the right sheet edge has split,