ABOUT THE ARTIST - William Henry Bartlett, (born in London, 26 March 1809; died at sea off Malta, 13 Sept 1854) was an English draughtsman, active also in the Near East, Continental Europe and North America. He was a prolific artist and an intrepid traveler. His work became widely known through numerous engravings after his drawings published in his own and other writers' topographical books. His primary concern was to extract the picturesque aspects of a place and by means of established pictorial conventions to render 'lively impressions of actual sights', as he wrote in the preface to The Nile Boat (London, 1849). Bartlett's several views of Scotland bear the date of 1837, and as Nathaniel Parker Willis stated, "Bartlett could select his point of view so as to bring prominently into his sketch the castle or the cathedral, which history or antiquity had allowed". Most views contain some ruin or element of the past including many scenes of churches, abbeys, cathedrals and castles. The interest in these engravings today is as much for the quality of the rendering and presentation of the architecture of the period as it is for the representation of the landscape.