Lot Essay
This unusual paper cut-out depicts Ashton Court in Bristol, the seat of the Smith family. Sir John Smith (d.1802) succeeded in 1783 and commissioned the landscape gardener Humphrey Repton in the following decade to draw up plans for alterations to the house, published in Observations on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening of 1802. These were never begun - perhaps in part because in 1802 Repton's partnership with John Nash (d.1835) was dissolved, and Nash took many architectural commissions which he owed to Repton with him. At any rate, an addition very different to Repton's was eventually made by Sir Hugh Smith (d.1824) before his death - a long seven-bay wing to balance the existing 17th Century wing on the other side of the Gateway - which is depicted both in this model and in John Rutter's 1829 engraving.