‘The Balloon Over Helsbye Hill in Cheshire’

Abstract

Writing in Airopaidia: Containing the Narrative of a Balloon Excursion (1786), Thomas Baldwin describes this view as "taken in a high Field, at the End of Sutton-Causeway," while looking to the southwest, 2.30PM "on Thursday the 8th of September, 1785" (iv). It comprises three horizontal panels, which offer in turn, beginning from the lower-margin of the design: first a beautiful, then a sublime and, finally, a hyper-sublime landscape.