THE print on sale in the York Art Gallery shop caught his eye. It showed an aerial panorama of the city as it would have looked in the 15th century.

Peter Stanhope was fascinated because the viewpoint was from where Skeldergate Bridge is now. In the foreground was Bishophill - and he was born and grew up in Fairfax Street.

The wonderfully-detailed pen-and-ink drawing shows Bishophill as then being primarily laid to gardens of the Priory of the Holy Trinity in Micklegate.

York city walls are clearly visible, with the surrounding moats filled with water and the water-towers defending the city from river-borne attack. The two mottes, Baile Hill and Clifford's Tower, are seen at either side of the River Ouse. In the distance is the Minster and the tightly-packed streets of mediaeval York.

The picture led Peter to ask, "who was Edwin Ridsdale Tate?" He has spent the past 20 years finding the answer - a quest which culminates with a public lecture next month.

On his mission, he has discovered a great many, highly varied, artworks by the man he knows as ERT. Some pictures are in pencil, others are in pen-and-ink, and a few come in watercolour. They have been found across York and beyond.

From an early age, it was clear Edwin Ridsdale Tate was destined to be a gifted artist and historian. He was born in St William's College Yard in 1862 when that area was apartments and tenements. His father was James Tate, a bookbinder and publisher of Bibles, but also an ardent historian and gifted amateur artist himself.

Tate's mother, Ann Ridsdale, was a "bookfolder" of Goodramgate prior to marriage, although she also had a brother, Edwin Scott Ridsdale, who was an architect and amateur artist of some skill. So it seems natural that young Edwin, after education at the Modern School in Lord Mayors Walk, would follow his father's interest in local history and his uncle's occupation in architecture.

He trained at the York School of Art & Design, then at Minster Gates, followed by further education at the Scarborough School of Art.

His first job was at Gould and Fisher, a firm of architects occupying the small Georgian building in Castlegate next to the formidable Castle walls, and now still best known as Caf Andros. From here the firm of architects had designed the Castle as a jail and also the nearby Crown Court.

Ridsdale Tate went on to work for a firm of architects in London which specialised in the restoration of religious and historic buildings. In this connection ERT soon found himself busy on the reconstruction of Bamburgh Castle in Northumber-land for the industrialist Lord Armstrong, who had bought the ruins as a pile of stonework.

A postcard from Tate to his family in York shows that he was involved in the restoration of the Great Kings Hall "for which I made nearly one thousand drawings".

Ridsdale Tate came to meet and marry a local York girl, Jane Elizabeth "Ipsie" Arthur, the daughter of J W Arthur of Arthur & Co who had their sheet music shop in Davygate.

The enterprise of J W Arthur and the artistic skills of Ridsdale Tate made a winning combination when they created what is possibly the earliest commercially-produced tourist picture postcard of York in 1893.

There followed many postcards of scenes of York (some of which have significantly changed over the years) which Tate painted and Arthur published. Many examples will be displayed in the slide show that goes with Peter's lecture.

Having moved away, Tate returned to York in 1904 following the early and sudden death of his beloved wife. Here he worked at 4 The Crescent and continued to draw and paint prodigiously.

Sometimes he pictured local street scenes or details of buildings about to be demolished, sometimes he recreated York as in previous times. But these were always authoritatively-researched and impeccably draughted.

His output in the early years of the last century was phenomenal - as if to overcome his grieving for the loss of his very young wife.

By 1909 Tate was deeply involved in the York Historic Pageant, held in the Museum Gardens with a "cast of thousands". He was on the scenery committee, the heraldry committee, and also designed the street decorations for the city.

At the very height of his productivity Edwin Risdale Tate fell victim to something as simple as appendicitis and died in his 61st year, in 1922.

It was six years earlier when ERT was approached by the then editor of the York Gazette (forerunner to the Evening Press) Mr D L Pressley, who commissioned him to create the "Panorama of York as in the 15th Century" - which was where Peter's journey of discovery had started in 1986.

This was commissioned to be reproduced in the 20,000th celebratory issue of the York Gazette on May 18, 1915 where it was spread across two pages with historical details and biographical notes regarding the artist.

It was later displayed in the window of the old Gazette office in Coney Street before being presented to the City of York by Mr Pressley to hang in the Mansion House "in perpetuity".

The oversize masterpiece was removed to safe storage during recent refurbishments of the Mansion House. But it didn't return.

Thanks to Peter's persistence and with the help of Richard Pollitt, business and collections officer at the Mansion House, the Ridsdale Tate panorama has now been "rediscovered" safe in a city centre store-room. It will shortly, hopefully, be returned to its rightful place in the Lord Mayor's civic home.

It is just one of an array of stunning ERT works which will illustrate Peter's lecture. He is Master of the Company of Cordwainers of the City of York, and the 14th guild is hosting his talk about this astonishing Victorian artist - all done with 21st digital technology.

Peter's lecture takes place at the National Centre for Early Music, Walmgate, York, on Wednesday, April 19.

All the proceeds will go to the Master charities: asthma and eplilepsy research To order tickets priced at £7.50 each, call Peter Stanhope on 01904 471800