File:Drawing (BM 1943,0410.1 1).jpg

Height: 134 millimetres

Width: 160 millimetres

Stainton & White 1987 The locality depicted in this charmingly naive watercolour is established by the artist's etching of West Hampnett Place, one of a series of five views in the neighbourhood of Chichester (Bodleian Library, Gough Topography 17528, f. 1b). Comparison with an eighteenth-century map of West Sussex shows that in order to frame the distant view of Chichester Cathedral more picturesquely, the artist has altered the position of the mill and the stream. West Hampnett Place, a red-brick gabled house of the late sixteenth century, built by Richard Sackville, was greatly altered in later times and destroyed by fire in 1930. The costume of the diminutive figures in the foreground suggests a date of about 1660 for this drawing. Dunstall's use of opaque watercolour on vellum is an interesting survival of a technique which goes back to manuscript illumination of the medieval period and which continued to be used for drawing maps and semi-cartographical bird's-eye views: as late as 1658 Sir William Sanderson described exactly the same method in his 'Graphice', in the section devoted to limning landscapes.

K Sloan, Noble Art 2000 Probably a native of West Sussex, Dunstall etched five views in the neighbourhood of Chichester around 1660. Three of the others depicted an ancient circular temple and a ruin, and a fourth was a view of the city from the north west. The fifth was based on the present watercolour, in which the mill on the right appears as prominently as Hampnett House; the city is just visible on the horizon and a great, ancient oak, dominates the foreground. Only one other drawing in this medium by Dunstall is known, a view of the North façade of Bethlem Hospital, the second 'Bedlam' erected to the designs of Robert Hooke, FRS, in Moorfields 1675-76 (ECM & PH 1). Dunstall's use of opaque watercolour on vellum corresponds exactly with Sir William Sanderson's description of limning a landscape in Graphice (1658, p. 70) - a technical description Sanderson had borrowed from Edward Norgate's manuscript Miniatura. It is a technique that goes back to mediaeval illumination and was used mainly in the 17th century for heraldry, maps, bird's eye views, miniature portraits and copies of old master paintings. It is precisely the type of painting that Peacham and Norgate recommended for gentlemen, along with drawing in pen and ink or with silver-point on prepared paper or vellum (see pp.40-1). Hilliard, Peacham, Norgate, Browne, and Gerbier all taught this type of painting in some form to amateurs, but Dunstall is the first who seems to have consistently made the attempt to earn a living as a school-master who 'Teacheth the Art of Drawing'. In his will he described himself as a schoolmaster and his library, the sale of which was advertised in September 1693, contained not only his tools and stock, but also mathematical instruments, books on divinity, history, architecture, perspective, English and Latin, and a 'Curious Collection of Prints and Drawings by the best Masters.' In November that year his widow Margaret sold his watercolours and prints (London Gazette, Nov 2, 1693). Dunstall seems to have planned a publication along the lines of Salmon's Graphice, a MS for which survives: The Art of Delineation, or Drawing. In 6 Books: 1. Geometry 2.Faces 3.Trees 4.Houses 5.Flowers 6.Fruits. with Particular Directions For Every Book. Drawn by John Dunstall School-Master, and Teacher of the Art of Drawing. In Black-friers, London (BL Add MS 5244). It consisted of a treatise on the 'Usefulness of this Art of Drawing' which he intended to publish along with six sets of plates, several of which had already been issued separately as copy books (see cat.35). His three surviving drawings were used as the basis for three of the prints he issued on Geometry (Bethlem Hospital), Trees (the present drawing) and Fruits (a pen and ink drawing of Walnuts of 1666, YCBA). The text was interspersed with quotations from the Old Testament and moral reflections, the first of his four main uses of drawing being its spiritual use. The second was the 'innocent employment it provides Ladies and Gentlewomen of Quality', the third, its use for young 'Gentlewomen's [needle] works' and finally, its use for various professions, not only painters and engravers. It ended with a discussion of the type of objects worthy of depiction: Man, beasts, birds, fish, insects and plants and trees, objects of God's creation he had illustrated in his engravings. Finally, he concluded with 'A Prospect in verse being a phantasie which came into my minde' as an illustration of the close affinity between drawing , which may be called a 'Silent Poem' and poetry a 'Speaking Picture', his own version of 'ut pictura poesis'. It is interesting that he did not attempt to give instructions for limning in his treatise, but rather concluded with a list of 'Necessary Instruments and Materials or things usefull in or for Practice in the Art of Drawing in Black and White' which included 'good prints to draw by', especialy those of Bloemaert.