Francis Place (1647–1728) and his collection of works on paper

Abstract

Abstract Within the modest archive of materials relating to the artist Francis Place at Hospitalfield House in Arbroath is an eighteenth-century notebook listing a selection of drawings by Place and others, which were inherited by his daughter Frances Wyndham. Although Place’s original and significant collection of prints, drawings and paintings is now widely dispersed, the drawings notebook at Hospitalfield and a corresponding notebook listing intaglio prints go some way to reconstructing the contents of his studio or ‘painting room’ at York, and aid our understanding of the influences that informed this largely self-taught artist. The details in the drawings notebook of sketches now lost or in private hands also greatly develop Place’s known oeuvre in this medium; evidence is provided for a far broader range of subjects, including nude figure studies and biblical subjects, than has previously been acknowledged.