Heap, George and Nicholas Scull

An East Prospect of the City of Philadelphia: taken by George Heap from the Jersey Shore, under the Direction of Nicholas Skull [sic] Surveyor General of the Province of Pennsylvania

“THE MOST DISTINGUISHED OF ALL PRINTS
OF THE CITY OF PHILADELPHIA”

[London:] Engraved by G. Vandergucht, Sep.^br 1.^st 1754. First state (“Skull” for “Scull” twice on sheet 3).

Four sheets (ca. 29 ½” x 23 ½” each). Framed floating.

An old transverse crease about 9” below the top edge, reinforced verso. Some small repairs to the sky. Tanning at the corners from an early mount. With good upper and lower margins throughout; sheets 1-3 trimmed to right-hand plate-mark; sheet 4 trimmed to left-hand plate-mark. Occasional very mild patches of tanning. An extraordinary set.

 

From its founding in 1680 between the Delaware and Schuylkill Rivers, Philadelphia was strategically poised to be a hub of trade. By the mid-XVIIIc it had become the major Atlantic port, fueling a golden age of growth and eminence in the arts and sciences — the Athens of America. The Penn family had long dominated the colony, and Thomas Penn, the founder’s son, commissioned a grand view of the city in 1750 to commemorate and to enhance its stature (the Penn arms at the lower left corner of the third plate underscore their dominance). George Heap undertook the project; he had been Philadelphia’s coroner. The ambition of the project matched the city’s stature: it was the grandest illustrated view of an American city that had ever been attempted.

Nicholas Scull (perhaps an uncle by marriage) superintended the work, and Heap began advertising for subscribers (20 shillings, 10 payable in advance) and with that money set sail for England (there being no means to print it in Philadelphia) with his drawings. Heap got only as far as Delaware, and died on-board; he was buried in Philadelphia on Boxing Day 1752. Thereafter Scull shepherded the vast work through the engraving and publishing process. The Dutch engraver Gerard Vandergucht was commissioned to cut the plates, which finally emerged in June of 1754 (the King hung it in his own apartments). Wainright begins his article on the prospect by hailing it as “the most distinguished of all prints of the city of Philadelphia in terms of age, rarity, and historic importance.”

In 1755 the view was shrunk by about two-thirds, and placed above a plan of the city and a view of the state house and the batter, engraved by Thomas Jefferys. This is far more common; of the Heap-Scull-Vandergucht view we have located only six copies in institutional collections: the American Philosophical Society (.748:P53:1754), Haverford College, Colonial Williamsburg, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania (second state), Independence National Historic Park and the New York Public Library (Stokes Collection, second state).

 

Deák I:99 (second state).

See Wainright, Nicholas B. “Scull and Heap’s East Prospect of Philadelphia” in The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 73, no. 1 (January 1949) 16-25.

Item #6JLR0154

Price: $850,000