Designs on the Landscape: Paul and Thomas Sandby in North Britain

Abstract

In 1747, a young Paul Sandby took up the role of chief draughtsman on the Military Survey of North Britain undertaken by the Board of Ordnance. This ambitious mapping project was part of a series of measures directed at ‘pacifying’ the Scottish highlands in the wake of the Jacobite rebellion of 1745, linking with a large-scale road building programme and the planning of new settlements. In his work for the Board, Sandby was employed in projecting as well as recording the progress of these improvements. Taking forward issues the authors first addressed in the catalogue to a 2009 exhibition of Sandby’s art, this article reviews the artist’s work in North Britain and its role in the remaking of the nation state, locating it in relation to various designs on the landscape. It focuses on drawings made in connection with ‘Utopian’ improvement schemes for planned settlements: firstly, in prospects of the west-coast town of Inveraray, made in collaboration with Sandby’s elder brother Thomas, and secondly, in a view of a surveying party at work near Loch Rannoch, in the southern highlands. They are works which open up wider perspectives on the roles of drawing and design in the period, raising questions too about the significance and scope of the ‘topographical’ as a genre.