A magnificent series of 16 views of the house and gardens of "De Voorst", the country estate of Arnold Joost van Keppel (1669/70 - 1718), Baron of Ashford, Margrave of Bury and Count of Albemarle, built by the architect Jacob Roman (1640 - ca.1716). Each view has a caption in Dutch and Latin below, mostly in two lines.Van Keppel inherited the estate near Zuthphen in 1686. At the expense of King William III of England (formerly the Dutch Stadtholder Willem III), he replaced the modest buildings and grounds with the lavish palace and gardens that contemporaries dubbed "the Versailles of the Achterhoek". After the death of Van Keppel's widow the estate declined, parts were torn down in the 19th century and a fire destroyed the interior in 1943. The estate was restored in the 1950s and 1990s to the present state. Schenk's present architectural and horticultural series gives a detailed view of the buildings, gardens and fountains soon after they were built during the heyday of "De Voorst".
The prints are numbered 33-48 in brown ink by a contemporary hand (wich would accord with their sequence if issued as aprt of the Paradisus oculorum). With a large patch of the decorated paper on each board badley abraded, boards slightly worn around the edges and spine, endpapers slightly browned, some minor marginal dust-soiling and staining (barely affecting the images), but overall in good condition. The Anglo-Dutch garden 74; Hollstein XXV, p. 295, nos. 1667-1682; Springer, Bibl. overzicht, pp. 43-44; STCN (4 copies).