Foresters in Windsor Great Park

Paul Sandby's brother Thomas (1723-98) was Steward or Deputy Ranger to successive royal occupants of Windsor Great Park from 1764 until his death, but Paul's series of watercolours of the Park does not seem to have started until the 1790s; Paul's second son had married Thomas's daughter in 1786 and had gone to live with Thomas in the Deputy Ranger's House. Paul's first dated views in the Park are of 1792 (see A.P. Opp, The Drawings of Paul and Thomas Sandby in the Collection of His Majesty the King at Windsor Castle, Oxford & London, 1947, pp. 34, nos. 91, 92, 94 and 95, two examples ilustrated; and J. Roberts, Views of Windsor: Watercolours by Thomas and Paul Sandby from the Collection of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, London, 1995, pp. 120-1, no. 41, illustrated in colour, and fig. 41.1). He exhibited View in the Woodyard, Windsor Great Park at the Royal Academy in 1793. The technique of the present watercolour and the team of oxen can be compared with the View in Windsor Forest, with Oxen drawing Timber, signed and dated 1793, in the the Victoria and Albert Museum (see L. Herrmann, Paul and Thomas Sandby, London, 1986, p. 116, no. 29, illustrated).