Captain Francis Grose Archbishop's Palace, Canterbury, Kent

An original 1767 watercolour painting, Captain Francis Grose, Archbishop's Palace, Canterbury, Kent.

A marvellous topographical drawing by Captain Francis Grose (1731–1791) showing the Archbishop's Palace in Canterbury in 1767. The front-on castellated building is the small remaining portion of the medieval Great Hall, which survived when most of the palace buildings were demolished in the 1650s. At the time of painting, the palace was unoccupied; it was only in 1896 that the Old Palace was restored and incorporated into the new palace erected in the precincts.

The verso of the drawing is inscribed 'Mr Plummer's House, Bishop's Palace, Canterbury, 5th November 1767'. The Plummer family was an established family of solicitors in Canterbury who operated as John Zachariah Plummer & Sons. John Zachariah Plummer died in 1828. In the 19th century Edward Plummer served as mayor of Canterbury and William Plummer as councillor.

As well as this drawing being a fascinating record of this area of Canterbury at that time, it is also an example of the work that Francis Grose is most celebrated for. Grose is credited with truly popularising antiquities in Britain amongst lay readers in the 18th century. His primary interest was Britain's medieval remains, which were beginning to exercise an increasing grip on the public imagination. Here Grose brings to life the medieval remains of the Archbishop's Palace, documenting the street as it was, with a billow of smoke from a yard, a two-wheeled cart near an open doorway and two gentlemen passing the time of day. Grose's good eye for composition and lovely fresh colours are well in evidence.

This drawing dates from relatively early in Grose's career, at a time when he was mixing in the London artistic milieu and began to exhibit, first at the Society of Artists in 1767–8. Grose's wife, Catherine Jordan, came from Canterbury, the pair having met when Grose had been posted to Kent on excise duties in 1750. They lived for a number of years in Canterbury after their marriage. A similar Canterbury drawing by Grose, View of the West Gate, Canterbury, dated 1766, is in the collection of the British Museum, 1944,1014.25.

In watercolour with pen and ink. On laid paper.