First edition. Royal 4to (278 x 338mm). Original publisher's red cloth with blind stamped arabesques to covers and gilt titles and design to spine. All edges gilt with yellow coated endpapers. No mark in the sky of the Twickenham plate. Twenty-four aquatint plates, two aquatint vignettes and a fold out engraved map of the Thames. Rebacked retaining the original spine, with rear joint now fraying. Wear to spine ends and corners repaired. Internally extremely fresh with bright plates. Tipped onto the front endpaper is a handwritten invoice by Westall to Ackermann, dated May 1828, for seven illustrations for the book.

One of the two great nineteenth century works on the Thames (Boydell being the other).
"The tradition of picture-books on the Thames was started by Samuel Ireland with his Picturesque Views on the River Thames published in 1791-2, but Boydell was quick to compete in 1793 with his own two-volume History of the Thames. Both of these, like the present volume, were illustrated with aquatints and between them they established a canon of most-favoured views from the source to the sea." - Bernard Adams (London Illustrated 1604-1851).
Adams also notes that,
"The colouring is less subdued than Boydell's, and there are more unaquatinted spaces where the interpretation has been left to the colour-washing artist. This gives the plates a greater resemblance to spontaneous water-colour drawings but leads inevitably to a greater disparity between individual copies."
It is in this respect that this copy particularly stands out, having an exceptionally good set of aquatints, which are both precise and vibrant. This may have something to do with being a very early set of impressions (all plates are watermarked 1826 or 1827 and the contents leaf in the uncommon earlier state).

PROVENANCE: Alfred Davis Jr (1859-1924, secretary of Marlow Rowing Club, presentation bookplate to front pastedown); R.N.H. Moore Stevens (sold at his sale, "A Very Choice Collection of Books with Coloured Plates", lot 431, July 1946)

Tooley 503; Abbey Scenery 435; Adams 157

Stock ID: 34555