1708
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Dominant colour
Beaufort House, Chelsea is a 1708 by Johannes Kip, a Baroque work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
This painting shows a big brick house with fancy gardens, drawn from above like a map. The house has pointy gables and long rows of hedges leading to it. It’s a picture of Beaufort House in London, once home to Sir Thomas More. The artist worked from England but was Dutch, and he drew it before the house was torn down. The lines are so sharp you can count every window. If you like old maps, look up the subject netherlands—many Dutch artists drew birds-eye views like this.
This detailed view of Beaufort House in Chelsea portrays the gabled house, built in 1521, and its extensive formal gardens. Part of a large folio publication of the principal seats of the nobility in England, the Britannia Illustrata , it portrays a structure that was once the home of Sir Thomas More and that was demolished in 1740. The two Dutch artists who collaborated on this and the other topographical views in the volume, both resident in England, were exacting in their depictions of the architecture and gardens, providing valuable insight to the land and buildings of the time.
The house and gardens portrayed in this hand-colored engraving were destroyed in 1740.
Read the full account in the museum source.
Johannes "Jan" Kip (1652/53 in Amsterdam – 1722 in Westminster) was a Dutch draftsman, engraver and print dealer. Together with Leonard Knyff, he made a speciality of engraved views of English country houses.
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