Beschreibung:

An East Prospect of the City of Philadelphia; taken by George Heap from the Jersey Shore, under the Direction of Nicholas Scull Surveyor General of the Province of Pennsylvania.
London: T. Jefferys, c. 1756. Two-sheet engraved view (500 x 940 mm). Text in four columns below the view, “A Description of the Situation, Harbour &c. of the City and Port of Philadelphia.” 14 numbered references. Inset map, “A Plan of the City of Philadelphia.” Inset views of the State House and the Battery. Framed. Condition : very minor tear in the left margin, a lovely example. Provenance : Martin P. Snyder. the famous scull and heap east prospect view: “the most distinguished of all prints of the city of philadelphia.” The origins of this impressive view of Philadelphia began in 1750, when proprietor Thomas Penn wrote his agent in Philadelphia asking for an artistic rendering of the city. Two years later, George Heap masterfully accomplished such a view from across the Delaware, presenting it in four panels in a very large format. Engraved and printed in June 1754, the print measured over seven feet long. “When Thomas Penn first saw Heap’s drawing for the East Prospect, he objected to its great size” (Snyder). Engraver Thomas Jefferys suggested a version reduced to two-thirds the original. “In August, 1755, the drawing of the contracted view of Philadelphia was finished. Thomas Penn liked it much better than the large one, [writing to Richard Peters,] ‘the perspective is well preserved, the Jersey shore, put in, which makes the water look like a River which in the first it did not’”(Wainwright). The presence of the New Jersey shoreline is indeed the most obvious difference between the large view and the contracted one. The detail is otherwise virtually identical, attesting to the skill of the engraver. The inset map below the view is surprisingly quite sparse, though in many respects is more accurate than any previous plan of the city. While its genesis is unknown, it seems likely to have been provided by Scull, perhaps as the early stages of his surveys for what would become the Clarkson-Biddle map of the city. The origins of the other additions, the views of the Battery and the Statehouse, are known; the former appearing as an inset to the original larger view and the latter from the 1752 Scull and Heap Map of Philadelphia (or more likely from the Gentleman’s Magazine re-engraving). The present example of the East Prospect is the second issue of the contracted view, with the spelling of Scull’s named corrected; Wainwright could not locate a single copy of the first issue. Of the contracted view, only 300 copies were ordered to be printed: 100 of the first state and 200 of the second issue. However, the original plate remained with Jefferys, who occassionally restruck the view into the 1760s. “The most distinguished of all prints of the city of Philadelphia in terms of age, rarity, and historical importance … These [i.e. both the large view and the contracted one] present the first engraved likenesses showing the city’s appearance” (Wainwright). Deak 100; Snyder, COI 18A (this copy illustrated as Fig. 18); Stokes and Haskell, p. 18; Wainwright, “Scull and Heap’s East Prospect of Philadelphia” in PMHB vol. 73, no. 1.