About this work
Wenceslaus Hollar lived a much-travelled life in a period of great turbulence. He left his hometown of Prague at age twenty and spent some nine years in Germany before arriving in London in 1636 as a protégé of the Earl of Arundel, the renowned English art collector and patron. Hollar spent eight years during the English Civil War in Antwerp before returning to England in 1652, where he lived out his life. He is known as England’s most significant early printmaker, making nearly three thousand etchings of great diversity during his career, both after his own designs and those of other artists.