Johannes "Jan" Kip (1652/53,

Amsterdam Amsterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Amstel'') is the capital and most populous city of the Netherlands, with The Hague being the seat of government. It has a population of 907,976 within the city proper, 1,558,755 in the urban ar ...

– 1722,

Westminster Westminster is an area of Central London, part of the wider City of Westminster. The area, which extends from the River Thames to Oxford Street, has many visitor attractions and historic landmarks, including the Palace of Westminster, B ...

) was a Dutch draftsman, engraver and print dealer. Together with Leonard Knyff, he made a speciality of engraved views of English country houses.

Life

Kip was a pupil of Bastiaen Stopendaal (1636–1707), from 1668 to 1670, before setting up on his own; his earliest dated engravings are from 1672. In April 1680, at the age of 27, he married Elisabeth Breda in Amsterdam. After producing works for the court of William of Orange in

, Kip followed William and Mary to London and settled in St. John Street in Farringdon, where he conducted a thriving printselling business. He also worked for various London publishers producing engravings after such artists as Francis Barlow (c. 1626–1704) and

Caius Gabriel Cibber Caius Gabriel Cibber (1630–1700) was a Danish sculptor, who enjoyed great success in England, and was the father of the actor, author and poet laureate Colley Cibber. He was appointed "carver to the king's closet" by William III. Biograph ...

(1630–1700), largely for book illustrations. He made several engraved plates for Awnsham & John Churchill's ''A Collection of Voyages & Travels'' (first published 1704). He signed the African scenes in volume V of the 1732 edition as "J. Kip". His most important works were the large fold-out folio illustrations for '' Britannia Illustrata'', 1708; for the 65 folio plates he engraved for the antiquary Sir Robert Atkyns, ''The Ancient and Present State of Glostershire,'' 1712 (1st edition); and for ''Le Nouveau Théâtre de la Grande Bretagne ou description exacte des palais de la Reine, et des Maisons les plus considerables des des Seigneurs & des Gentilshommes de la Grande Bretagne,'' 1715, an extended reprint in collaboration with other artists.

Partnership with Leonard Knyff

The linked careers of Jan Kip and Leonard Knyff made a specialty of engraved views of English country houses, represented in detail from the bird's-eye view, a pictorial convention for

topography Topography is the study of the forms and features of land surfaces. The topography of an area may refer to the land forms and features themselves, or a description or depiction in maps. Topography is a field of geoscience and planetary sc ...

. Their major work was ''Britannia Illustrata: Or Views of Several of the Queens Palaces, as Also of the Principal seats of the Nobility and Gentry of Great Britain, Curiously Engraven on 80 Copper Plates,'' London (1707, published in the winter of 1708–9). The volume is among the most important English topographical publications of the 18th century.

Architecture Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and constructing building ...

is rendered with care, and the settings of

parterre A ''parterre'' is a part of a formal garden constructed on a level substrate, consisting of symmetrical patterns, made up by plant beds, low hedges or coloured gravels, which are separated and connected by paths. Typically it was the part of ...

s and radiating avenues driven through woods or planted across fields, garden paths, gates and toolsheds are illustrated in detail. The images are staffed with figures and horses, coaches pulling into forecourts, water-craft on rivers, in line with the traditions of the

Low Countries The term Low Countries, also known as the Low Lands ( nl, de Lage Landen, french: les Pays-Bas, lb, déi Niddereg Lännereien) and historically called the Netherlands ( nl, de Nederlanden), Flanders, or Belgica, is a coastal lowland region in N ...

. Some of the plates are in the Siennese "map perspective".

References

External links

("Heatons of Tisbury)

(The Philadelphia Print Shop Ltd.)

(The Red House Collection)

(ArtCyclopedia) {{DEFAULTSORT:Kip, Jan 1652 births 1722 deaths Artists from Amsterdam Dutch printmakers Dutch cartographers 17th-century cartographers 17th-century Dutch people Dutch emigrants to the Kingdom of England

Life

Partnership with Leonard Knyff

References

Further reading

External links