A tour of Windsor Castle currently includes the exhibition (until 5 May) Capturing the Castle: Watercolours of Windsor by Paul and Thomas Sandby. Twenty handsome watercolours from the Royal Collection are displayed together with three eighteenth-century guide books to Windsor and the newly acquired (November 2013) large miniature portrait of Paul Sandby, signed and dated 1787, by Philip Jean. Sandby is depicted in this portrait facing the viewer, with open sketchbook and holding a porte-crayon, against a distant view of Windsor Castle. The selection of views featured in the exhibition follows the sights experienced by the eighteenth-century tourist, and captures how the castle looked during the reign of George III, before the changes brought about by James Wyatt from 1796 onwards. These were continued by George IV and his architect, Sir Jeffry Wyatville, during the early nineteenth century, giving the Castle its appearance enjoyed by the public today and, more specifically, allowing direct comparisons of the images of the Castle on display in the exhibition with today’s visitor route. Capturing the Castle is more of a special display than a formal exhibition. Consequently, both the selection and the hang appear to have been dictated by the spaces available in the gallery and any theming is necessarily limited. The title is also something of a misnomer as Thomas Sandby’s hand is only identified in one of the views exhibited, all the others being the work of Paul Sandby. For a lover of early watercolour paintings, however, this exhibition provides a splendid opportunity to see a number of examples of Paul Sandby’s work that are not so readily accessible, brought together.

Thomas (1723-98) and Paul (1730-1809) Sandby were born in Nottingham and both left home in 1742 for London where, through the influence of Thomas, Paul was appointed to the Military Drawing Office of the Tower of London. Thomas was employed by the Duke of Cumberland to accompany him on his military campaigns culminating in the Battle of Culloden in 1746. Cumberland was then appointed Ranger of Windsor Great Park with Thomas as his deputy. Meanwhile Paul was employed by the Board of Ordinance as a draughtsman to the Military Survey in Scotland where, besides the mechanical drawings required, he soon began to make picturesque sketches and brilliant drawings of individual figures. He then came south and joined his brother at Windsor, and while Thomas was concerned with landscape gardening for the Duke, Paul drew, painted and produced etchings, before they both returned to London in 1760. The brothers were amongst the founding members of the Royal Academy of Arts when it was established in 1768. In the same year, Paul was appointed Chief Drawing Master at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, a post which he held until 1791. George III would also go on to appoint Paul as drawing master to the young princes. 

Paul’s views of Windsor Castle cover almost half a century, with closely comparable subjects repeated throughout the 70s, 80s, and 90s. Evidence of his training in the topographical tradition – something he shared with other eighteenth-century painters – is represented by two wide panoramic views. The North Front of the Castle from the Maestricht Pond (c. 1765) shows the Castle’s long façade reflected in the calm water of the pond, framed by trees on the left. In the foreground are a number of cows and a horse which can be identified from a drawing in the Royal Collection inscribed as the ‘Duke of Cumberland’s mare’. Any collaboration between Thomas and Paul is difficult to distinguish and both are credited with The Lower Ward seen from the base of the Round Tower (c. 1760). This panoramic view is framed on the left by the darker tone of the base of the Round Tower, and looks down to the Henry III and Winchester Towers, with St George’s Chapel between them and a distant view of the town and hills beyond. Every detail is painted with great delicacy and bright sunlight plays on the red roofs and the brick wall surrounding the ditch below the Round Tower.

An enlarged plan of Windsor Castle from 1760 close to the entrance of the exhibition shows ‘at one view the several Appartments in the Royal Palace as shown to ye publick with sundry other Appartments belonging to Officers of State etc etc’. This explains how the castle is surrounded by a stone curtain wall with a number of towers and two entrances to the town. It is divided into three wards, the central one mostly being taken up by the Round Tower surrounded by a ditch. Paul Sandby’s watercolour drawing of the Quadrangle in the Upper Ward looking from the East towards the Round Tower (c. 1765) shows the Round Tower before it was refaced and raised, in 1830, to its present height and a flag turret added. Below, facing it, is the equestrian monument to Charles II by Josias Ibach (1679) on a pedestal carved by Grinling Gibbons and surrounded by a railing. As today, the eighteenth-century public were allowed into what was then a former residence of monarchs; the royal apartments had fallen into considerable disrepair and were occupied by retainers. In 1776 George III decided that he and his family should return to Windsor on an occasional basis, and as the castle was uninhabitable they stayed in the Queen’s Lodge while restoration was undertaken. Quadrangle in the Upper Ward looking from the East towards the Round Tower provides an accurate and interesting record of this juncture, as subsequently Hugh May’s round-headed windows that are featured in Sandby’s view were Gothicised, the statue of Charles II was rotated and reinstalled at the west end, facing east, and the public were no longer admitted. However, terraces along the outer walls were, and still are, open areas for promenading, and The North Terrace of Windsor Castle (c. 1790), a painting acquired by the Prince Regent, is one of the many versions of the popular subject of public promenading Paul Sandby produced in a variety of media. The scene is animated with figures, a group of ladies on the right, a delightful boy playing with two dogs and a group of men in the middle distance, together with a small line of sentries along the building on the left. As in many of his watercolours, Sandby reinforces the figures here with the use of body colour. Also on view is a copy of the 1782 edition of Les Delices de Windsore: or, A Pocket Companion to Windsor Castle, and the Country Adjacent by Joseph Pote, first published in 1755 for the growing number of tourists visiting Windsor. In it, Pote describes the North Terrace as ‘the noblest walk in Europe’ and in Paul Sandby’s work the dark receding buildings alongside it draw the eye to the palely lit Thames Valley and the hills beyond Maidenhead. It is still part of the visitor route today, though the distant view of modern Slough is less idyllic.

Paul Sandby’s mastery of perspective is amply demonstrated by The Ascent of the Royal Tower (c. 1770), a dramatic watercolour drawing of the long flight of steps which allowed visitors in the eighteenth century access to enjoy the magnificent view from the gallery around the base of the Round Tower. The steep ascent is emphasised by contrasts of light and shadow and a long ladder hanging from hooks along the wall, while groups of figures, including a guard beside a woman seated on the steps with a child and a family group descending the stairs, enliven the scene and provide a sense of scale. The variety of the figures which animate Paul Sandby’s scenes separate him from being a purely topographical artist. For example, The Horseshoe Cloister and the Curfew Tower (c. 1770), an area later rebuilt by George Gilbert Scott, gives a glimpse of everyday life. A stone-cutter chisels away at a block while close by a figure stands beside a well, and a woman, in an open doorway set into a brick wall, appears to be doing her washing. This scene evokes comparisons with Canaletto’s Stone Mason’s Yard (c. 1725) in the National Gallery, and the progressive replacement of anonymous staffage by directly observed individual figures in Paul Sandby’s work owes much to the example set by Canaletto during his stay in England, 1746 – c. 1756 (with short intervals in Venice). In the foreground of The Norman Gateway and Moat Garden (c. 1770) a boy waters a flowerbed of roses beyond which is the mid eighteenth-century façade of the Deputy Governor’s house, with its classical pediment and newly introduced sash windows. The character of many precisely observed architectural details in Paul Sandby’s pictures again suggests parallels with Canaletto, but they also emphasise the merits of transparent watercolour as a medium for catching the soft and delicate nuances cast by sunlight illuminating the scene.

Between 1763 and 1768 Paul Sandby exhibited at the Society of Artists eight Windsor Castle subjects, painted in body colour, the first being A Gateway at Windsor Castle. Their success led him to repeat these early subjects in watercolour and on a smaller scale, many of which were acquired by Sir Joseph Banks. Although George III himself did not acquire watercolours by Sandby, these were subsequently bought for the Royal Collection and the Royal Family’s enthusiasm for watercolours of Windsor continues today. The watercolour Henry VIII Gateway from the Lower Ward (c. 1767) shows the main entrance to the castle, its stonework painstakingly delineated, with a view through the darker archway to the brightly lit town beyond. The room above the gate was then used as a debtors prison and from a barred window a figure lowers a bucket while a placard fixed to the wall is inscribed with minute characters, ‘Pray Remember the Poor Confin’d Debtors’. Here the figures, reinforced by touches of gouache, are superimposed onto the scene, as so often in Sandby’s watercolours. The horse and rider seen from behind illustrate his practice of re-using figures; in this case they also appear in The Secretary of State’s Tower and the Tennis Court, from the Little Park and in his aquatint of Shrewsbury, Old Bridge.

An interesting comparison is made between The Henry VIII Gateway from the Lower Ward and the view in the other direction as depicted in The Henry VIII Gateway with a view of St George’s Chapel (c. 1775), since in the latter the figures in the front of the Gateway are relatively larger and more strongly outlined with reed pen. A sentry leans over a low wall on the left, beside whom a boy is seated with a goat, while a second sentry looks on at a woman, brandishing a stick and driving a cart drawn by mules. On the right of the gateway is a knife-grinder at work, smoking his pipe, and a sweep and a child look on, in stark contrast to the two well-dressed ladies behind the couple in an elegant chaise entering the Horseshoe Cloister. Altogether this crowded view is much more colourful and freely painted with an enhanced narrative quality. Paul Sandby’s later View of the Round, Winchester and Stone Towers in Windsor Castle (c. 1790), meanwhile, stands out in the exhibition as almost Claudian, where the Round Tower, under repair, is bathed in warm evening light. Executed in a much more painterly style, cottages nestle below the trees and a solitary woman and child occupy the foreground, evoking a poetic mood which would appeal to the contemporary taste for the picturesque and fulfilling Gainsborough’s oft quoted description (c. 1764) of Paul Sandby as ‘the only Man of genius…[for] real views of Nature’. 

The twenty watercolours on view, mostly in fresh condition, attest to Paul Sandby’s achievement and contribute to our understanding of the beginnings of watercolour painting as a distinct form of British art, soon to be developed, not least by Girtin, Turner and their contemporaries. The paintings exhibited are not numbered and there is no hand list, let alone a printed catalogue, but all are reproduced on the Royal Collection website with a facility to zoom into areas of individual paintings. Each is accompanied there by detailed catalogue information heavily reliant on A. P. Oppé’s catalogue of Sandby Drawings at Windsor Castle (1947). The publicity concerning the exhibition invites one to download a free app which lets the visitor explore Windsor Castle and its grounds through a comparison of Paul Sandby’s watercolours with contemporary photographs. This is the primary aim of the exhibition, but it transpires that this is limited to Apple iPhones (not android), and iPads. Undoubtedly this use of technology has a potentially significant value, but deployed here it is discriminatory against many visitors, not least older members of the public and those from overseas. Nonetheless, Paul Sandby has left a fascinating and very remarkable record of Windsor Castle as it appeared during the latter part of the eighteenth century.

Capturing the Castle: Watercolours of Windsor by Paul and Thomas Sandby is at Windsor Castle from 7 February to 5 May 2014.