Shows the scene from the Palace of Westminster on the left to the Palace of Placentia on the right.

In producing his panorama Whittock made use of a series of drawings in the Sutherland Collection, then in the Bodleian Library, today in the Ashmolean Museum. These drawings, by an artist from the Low Countries, Antonis van den Wyngaerde, together form a prospect over 3 metres length, and constitute our earliest general view of London. For the Bermondsey Abbey detail Whittock acknowledges the use of another source. Wheatley (see reference below) describes the outcome as ‘entirely untrustworthy.’

Proposals were issued in c.1826 by Messrs. Harding, Tiphook and Lepard, booksellers, for a reduced facsimile of the original. It was never published. Nathaniel Whittock produced two tracings of the original, presenting one to Frederick Crace (which is now in the British Museum), and the other to the Corporation of London (now in Guildhall Library). The publication of his facsimile was announced in a handbill (copy in Guildhall Library’s Noble Collection). It was priced at 12s.6d, or 10s. unbound for framing. The publisher is given as Henry Gray, genealogical and topographical bookseller, 47 Leicester Square, W.C. The Folger Shakespeare Library has a loose advertisement dated 1896 announcing the [re]publication of the print. A prospectus, ‘with reduced facsimile’, would be sent ‘for one stamp.’ The London Topographical Society published a 7-sheet facsimile of the original drawings in 1881-1882 as their Publication No. 1, with notes by Henry B. Wheatley. Keys to the buildings shown in the Wyngaerde view appear in the LTS’s more recent Publication No. 151 (see Colvin and Foister).

The present first state of the print bears the imprint ‘Published by Whittock and Hyde, 34 Richard Street, Islington, London.’. The present prospect is an example of the second state.