Bird-Eye View Drawing, Repton's Red Book for Sundridge Park, Bromley

Humphry Repton (1752-1818) set out to be the leading landscape gardener of his time and famously created Red Books for his clients. Repton’s Red Books were a unique marketing tool. Compiled after he had visited a client, walking their grounds and discussing the landscape’s potential, the books are filled with watercolours showing ‘before’ and ‘after’ scenes. Lifting a paper flap, or reveal, shows a view transformed. Repton described his Red Books as a ‘means of making my ideas equally visible, or intelligible to others’. This drawing showing a birds-eye view of the landscape is from the Red Book he created for Sundridge Park in Bromley, South East London.