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Overview
Wenceslaus (or Wenzel) Hollar (1607-77) was an Anglo-Czech artist, and one of the greatest and most prolific printmakers of the 17th century. His art reveals his immensely wide subject range, and reflects the priorities of his time: religion, mythology, satire, landscapes, geography and maps, portraits, women, costumes, sports, natural history, architecture, heraldry, numismatics, ornaments, title-pages and initials.
Between 1636 and 1644 Hollar was employed as an artist and cataloguer in the household of Thomas Howard, 21st Earl of Arundel, one of the greatest art collectors of his era. The Earl, a victim of the English Civil War, fled overseas and died in 1646; Hollar himself moved with his family to Antwerp in 1644, from which period this etching dates. The return of political stability led to Hollar's own return to London in 1652, where he lived and worked until his death.
Prosperous trade cities such as London, Venice and Ghent invested their commercial wealth in grand civic buildings. London's Royal Exchange was the city’s first purpose-built commercial centre. Here Hollar depicts the courtyard, with an arcade round the three visible sides. The first floor has niches with statues between the pilasters, and only one window in the centre of each side. Over the roof stands a square tower with two balconies. People are standing or walking under the arcades. and a man with a rod is chasing small boys, a quirky touch on Hollar's part. In the sky a flying Cupid trails the title ribbon behind him. The etching is a valuable record of the original building which dated from 1571, and which would be destroyed not many years later (1666) in the Great Fire of London.
See:
Richard Pennington, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Etched Work of Wenceslaus Hollar (1607-1677) (Cambridge, 1982), no. 907.
Mark Stocker, 'Wenceslaus Hollar: Etching the 17th Century', http://blog.tepapa.govt.nz/tag/wenceslaus-hollar/
Dr Mark Stocker Curator, Historical International Art September 2018