Lot 830: SIR JEFFRY WYATVILLE, R.A. (1766-1840)

ENDSLEIGH COTTAGE, DEVON
signed and dated 'Jeffry Wyatt/Arch/1813' (lower centre) and inscribed 'the Duke of Bedford's Cottage at Endsleigh in Devonshire' twice (lower right)
black ink and watercolour, matt scratching out
13 1/4 x 22 1/4 in. (33.6 x 53.9 cm.)

C.Hussey, 'Endsleigh-II', Country Life, 10 August 1961, fig.1.

John, 6th Duke of Bedford (d.1839) inherited the Tavistock estate, Devon in 1802 and consulted the architects Humphrey Repton (d.1818) and Jeffry Wyatt (later Sir Jeffry Wyatville) (d.1840) in the picturesque embellishment of Endsleigh gardens overlooking the river Tamar, and the building of a family villa or rustic lodge in the manner of a 'cottage orné'. Jeffry, part of the celebrated Wyatt dynasty of architects, builders and sculptors, had established his own practice in 1799 after training in the office of James Wyatt (d.1813), Surveyor General of George III's Board of Works. His Endsleigh designs display the talent of the 'painter-architect', who harmonised building and scenery as lauded in Uvedale Price's, Essay on the Picturesque, 1798. The house's foundation stone was laid in 1810, in the year that Wyatt's Endsleigh designs were first exhibited at the Royal Academy; and amongst the other plans and watercolours, which he showed there until 1816 was his Perspective of a 'Swiss Cottage', which was located in what was called 'a sort of Alpine garden'. (D. Linstrum, The Wyatt Family, Catalogue of the Drawings Collection of the Royal Institute of British Architects, London, 1973). This view of the main house with its adjoining family wing was executed in 1813 (see engraving Lot 828).

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