Antique Prints of English Mansions

Alexander Francis Lydon (1836/37–1917) was an Irish-born British artist, watercolourist, illustrator and engraver active in the 19th century. He specialised in detailed natural history subjects and landscapes. He became especially known for his architectural and estate views starting his career apprenticed to the printer Benjamin Fawcett, with whom he maintained a long and fruitful collaboration throughout his life.

His work featured prominently in major illustrated books including the six-volume The County Seats of the Noblemen and Gentlemen of Great Britain and Ireland, authored by the Rev. Francis Orpen Morris. In this project Lydon produced meticulous drawings of grand country houses and estates which captured the architectural detail as well as well as the surrounding countryside, which were then engraved for printing.

This large collection of Country Seats were reproduced through a multi-block colour wood engraving technique often referred to as chromoxylography, based on the Baxter process. The Baxter process — named after its inventor George Baxter and licensed to a few printers including Fawcett — involved layering many colour blocks (often eight or more) to build up rich, subtle colour effects. Each colour was printed from its own carved wood block in precise registration, resulting in prints often mistaken for watercolours because of their tonal delicacy and richness.

ILydon’s precise draughtsmanship provided the design and engraved line work, while Benjamin Fawcett, one of the foremost practitioners of the Baxter colour printing technique, executed the complex colour printing to produce the finished plates. Together their work produced some of the finest Victorian colour prints of British country seats and contributed significantly to visual documentation of these estates.