Views of York... (From York Press)

Views of York...

9:02am Tuesday 3rd July 2012 in News By Stephen Lewis

This is a view of York Minster you’ll never have seen before. You’d not even be able to see it if you could travel back in time to 1820, when Henry Cave painted the scene.

It shows the northern face of the Minster – but it is very much an idealised view, writes Peter Brown in his catalogue to the Views of York exhibition at Fairfax House, where this painting is on loan from York Art Gallery.

“All the inconvenient buildings fronting onto College Street and Minster Yard have been swept aside to offer an uninterrupted view of the architectural elements of this magnificent Gothic cathedral,” Mr Brown writes.

The result is to create for the Minster a wonderfully rural setting: one that somehow seems in perfect harmony with the building itself.