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Summary
Author: Cowdry, Richard
Title: A description of the pictures, statues, busto's, basso-relievo's, and other curiosities at the Earl of Pembroke's house at Wilton. The second edition, corrected.
Publication: London, for the author 1752.
Price: £750
Reference: 09805
Full Description
8vo. (8) + 119 + (1)pp. Contemporary full calf (cracking at hinges but the binding sound), slightly chipped at head and foot of spine. Ink ownership inscription of Walter C.L.Floyd, 1893. Signed in ink by the author on the verso of leaf A4, a few ink additions to the printed text also in his hand. A good, fresh copy.
The first comprehensive guide book to Wilton House, listing both the collection of family portraits and Old Master paintings put together by successive Earls of Pembroke in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and the collection of classical sculptures formed more recently by Thomas Herbert, 8th Earl of Pembroke (1657-1733). What gives it particular authority is that it was compiled by the author with help and guidance from the volume's dedicatee, Sir Andrew Fountaine, the trusted friend and artistic adviser of the 8th and 9th Earls, and the identifications of subject matter and artists made in the text must therefore have come with Fountaine's approval. The first edition of the guide book had appeared in 1751, apparently in two separate states, and this final corrected edition followed in 1752 (although a few ink additions in the author's hand in the present copy indicate that correction was a continuing process). Each of the editions is decidedly scarce today, and Cowdry's book is much more uncommon than the later guide to Wilton by Kennedy.