Des Barres, Pierie & Newton View of Boston taken on the road to Dorchester

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lotto/des barres pierie newton view of boston taken on the road to dorchester 2BUakKi 632214553

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lotto/des barres pierie newton view of boston taken on the road to dorchester 2BUakKi 632214553

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Des Barres, Pierie & Newton View of Boston taken on the road to Dorchester

DES BARRES, Joseph Frederick Wallet (1721-1824), after PIERIE, William (fl. late 18th century) & James NEWTON (1748-1804). View of Boston taken on the road to Dorchester. Copperplate engraving. London: F.W. DeBarres, 1776. 21 1/4" x 32" sheet, 33" x 43 1/2" framed. Finest 18th Century View of Boston First edition. Engraved by Newton after the drawing by British soldier and artist Pierie. "The artist William Pierie (Pierrie is presumably a misspelling by the engraver) was a British artillery officer who drew a series of views of the town and environs of Boston in 1773" (Deak, p. 87). "Some sense of Boston's early geography as a peninsula is gained from a British officer's rendering of it not long before the outbreak of hostilities with England. The view, taken from Dorchester to the southwest, embraces a wide ring of the town's bucolic surroundings while clearly showing its peninsular formation It was connected to the mainland by a narrow neck that just prevented it from being and island. By the end of the next century, the insular quality of this strategic spit of land had already begun to erode when new routes of access by land were created. As the population increased and space grew scarce on the peninsula, not only were landfill projects steadily undertaken, but Boston's three large hills were cut down to provide the landfill. The hills formed a high rugged mass extending through the center of the peninsula, known as the Trimountain. In this carefully drawn "Atlantic Neptune" engraving, an image of the Trimountain has been nicely preserved. Visible on one of its hills (originally called Sentry Hill) is the beacon erected by order of the General Court in 1634 to warn the inhabitants of any danger. Known as Beacon Hill today, this topographic elevation, massively cut down, serves as a pale reminder of Boston's earlier humped formation. "In 1773, English drawings and engravings focused on Boston for several reasons. Boston was not only one of England's thriving colonial seaports, it was also the city where disenchantment toward the mother country was most clearly in evidence. The Boston Massacre had only recently taken place; the defiant Boston Tea Party would soon be staged." Deak 132. Gloria Gilda Deak, Picturing America, 1497-1899. "Although Des Barres was contemptuos of land surveying in comparison to sea charting, his maps shows differences in soil structure and types of beaches, and often include details of the fields, woods, and houses adjacent to the shore. His plans of harbors and the number of soundings in them, especially of those he surveyed himself, are impressive in contrast to any previous work. But it is the artistic excellence of his views, the sheer beauty of the work on them that he did or supervised, that gives a pleasure only those who open the pages of The Atlantic Neptune can realize. Contrast the engravings of the profiles of shoreline in an English Pilot or a West-India Pilot. In a time when there were no photographs, when the seaman could not count on his charts to be accurate, the identifying profiles and directions accompanying the charts were of vital importance. Des Barres, in such views as are shown in the figures here reproduced, raised the drawings of coastal profiles to a high art. Des Barre's achievement as a hydrographer was immediately and widely recognized. In Paris, L'Esprit des Journaux, in reviewing The Atlantic Neptune, said: "[It is] one of the most remarkable products of human industry that has ever been given to the world through the arts of printing, and engraving... the most splendid collection of charts, plans and views ever published. Two hundred years later, the judgement has not changed." (Cumming, British Maps of Colonial America).

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