The Nattes Drawings

From the first volume of Views in Lincolnshire we learn that:

‘The principal object which induced the collector of these drawings to undertake the task of procuring them was a strong desire to mark precisely the state in which these magnificent remains…were actually in, at the later period of his life. He had seen…considerable dilapidation take place and he conceived it would prove agreeable amusement to himself if it should please God to grant him a comfortable old age as well as his friends and neighbours to compare the state in which the ruined abbeys and mouldering castles will be reduced at future periods, to that in which they actually were at the close of the 18th and the commencement of the 19th century.’

‘He conceived also that it would offer an interesting amusement to his visitors to view at their leisure delineations of places they had read as interesting…and that the drawings of a castle or mansion would in some cases excite a curiosity the gratification of which would be the cause of an agreeable excursion and in other cases by allaying an inclination arising from mistake or misinformation prevent the disappointment of visiting a place not worthy of being the object of a morning drive.’

‘In the course of this pursuit which he continued during his occasional residences in the country from the year 1790 to 1805 he found amusement in the company of an artist of talents who was able to add some information respecting the fine arts to the conversation of his family circle and from this motive he has probably extended his collections….’

‘It was chiefly with a view to find employment for this artist that…’ the drawings were commissioned, and regarding the content of those drawings we are left with ‘the pleas that they be hereafter useful to those who have questions and enquiries into the state in which they were when the drawings were made.’

As the drawings predate photography, and the extensive church restoration of the nineteenth century, they bear comparison with later photographs.