Drayson, Henry Edwin:

$14,000 · Offered by William Reese Company · No longer available

[ALBUM OF ORIGINAL WATERCOLOR AND PEN AND INK DRAWINGS OF SCENES IN NEWFOUNDLAND, NEW YORK STATE, NIAGARA FALLS AND THE GREAT LAKES, AND ELSEWHERE]. A valuable pictorial record of an extensive tour of North America, including views of Niagara, the Great Lakes, and the partially-built Washington Monument on the banks of the Potomac.The sketches are all by Henry Edwin Drayson, C.E. who lived first at "High Cross, near Henfiled and Poynings" in Sussex, England, before moving to Eyeworth Lodge in the New Forest in Hampshire, England. Evidenced by his professional credentials, Drayson was a civil engineer and surveyor in Kent and the brother of Alfred Wilks Drayson, to whom Arthur Conan Doyle dedicated his book, THE CAPTAIN OF THE POLE STAR. The present sketches demonstrate the practiced hand of a professional draftsman, while his watercolors offer charming impressions of the beauty and grandeur of the mountains and waterways of North America.The album includes a few earlier sketches of Sussex and Wales, but the majority of the images were drawn by Drayson during a trip to the United States. Judging from the dated drawings in the album, this journey took place in 1857 from September (a drawing of Cape Race, Newfoundland is dated September 20, 1857) until about the end of November in the same year.Drayson's itinerary included Niagara Falls (six images, including a striking double-page view of the falls); the Great Lakes (eight images, including a vibrantly-colored view of Green Bay

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