John Walker after Richard Corbould, ‘Langley Park, Buckinghamshire’ in The Copper-plate Magazine or Monthly Cabinet of Picturesque Prints, consisting of Sublime and Interesting Views in Great Britain and Ireland, 1 December 1794

The Copper-plate Magazine (1792–1802) was a richly-illustrated monthly publication in which was reproduced works by some of the most distinguished landscape painters of the day. Paintings by Paul Sandby, Thomas Girton, and J. M. W. Turner were engraved in fine detail by the prodigious John Walker. The publication was popular among the new employer class of eighteenth-century Britain, who could afford the relatively high price of 1s 1d per issue, but whose business commitments in town denied them the opportunity to visit houses and landscapes in person. A combination of the appetite for ‘polite’ subject matter, and the close correlation between landscape design and landscape painting, meant that country estates were a recurrent subject; particularly those with parks that had been ‘improved’ and so lent themselves to an affecting representation in paint and print.