Print (Engraving, Hand-Coloured) of Broad Street, Oxford, Showing the Clarendon Building, Sheldonian Theatre, and Old Ashmolean, by John Donowell, Printed and Published by John Bowles, Between 1767 and 1779

Hand-coloured engraving in the style of the perspective and zograscope prints that were popular in the 18th century, with dual caption in English and French. It is the most unusual of the numerous prints showing the eastern part of Broad Street, Oxford, with its three famous university buildings 'the Museum, the Theatre, the Printing House', and includes several unique features seldom or never otherwise documented: the cylindrically-trimmed tree, the steps where the level of the street changes at the boundary between the Old Ashmolean and Exeter College, the grand back gate of Exeter College with incongruous old cottages beside it, and the primitive wooden scaffolding used in repairing the cottage or outbuilding. Note that one of the sculptural heads in front of the Old Ashmolean has turned to look at the artist. The business collaboration between the print-sellers John Bowles and his son Carrington Bowles, indicated in the imprint, dates the print between 1767 and 1779. The artist John Donowell, presumably an architect (his signature reads 'I. Donowell Arch. del.'), produced a series of views of buildings and gardens (hence perhaps the number 6 at top right) distinctive for their dramatic receding perspective and classical symmetry, to be printed and published by the Bowles family, of London, with bilingual captions.