An exhibition of architectural paintings and drawings from 1600 – 1850 which includes both fantasy views and highly detailed views of actual locales.

Architectural painting in the 17th Century was employed by a number of specialist artists who very often employed another painter to add the figures. Their skilled use of perspective and plunging diagonals gave their paintings a dramatic three dimensional quality, especially in the fantastical views where they could allow their imagination to take over. Sometimes artists blurred the edges between fact and fiction and wonderful capriccio views of genuine cities and places were the result.

While real views of buildings and their interiors were further limited to a select group of specialist painters this type of view became more common place towards the 19th Century with itinerant artists travelling throughout the continent depicting their surroundings often in very a very highly finished and detailed manner.

What remains a constant throughout the centuries is the artists extraordinary skill in rendering architectural features and their predilection for solving perspectival challenges.