Plan du Jardin & Vue des Maisons de Chiswick

Object Type
This print by Jean Rocque combines two printmaking techniques - etching and engraving. Both involved creating a pattern of grooves to hold ink in a metal printing plate. The image on the printing plate was the reverse of the final image. The etched lines were made using acid, while the engraved lines were scored by means of a sharp tool called a burin. The grooves were then filled with ink and the image was transferred onto a blank sheet of paper.

Subject Depicted
Jean Rocque has combined a map of the gardens of Chiswick House at the centre of this print, with a series of views of the house and garden around the margins. The house is just to the left of the middle of the three views running down the right-hand edge. It is also depicted in three of the four scenes along the bottom edge. In the bottom right-hand corner is a view of the side of the house that faces the garden. Next to this is a view of the front of the building, and then a view of the side.

Trading
Jean Rocque (active from 1730, died in 1762) was a French surveyor, mapmaker and printmaker. He was living in London at the time he made this print. The lettering on it says it could be bought from 'the Proprietor at ye Canister and Sugar Loaf in Great Windmill Street St James's'. This suggests the print was being sold not from a print shop but from the premises of a grocer or tea merchant, in the French quarter of Soho in London. Perhaps Rocque was lodging there with a fellow countryman.