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Born in Yorkshire, Samuel Buck received early encouragement and employment from the Yorkshire antiquaries Ralph Thoresby and John Warburton. It was probably Warburton who introduced Buck to the society of Antiquaries in London. Though never a Fellow of the Society, Buck frequently attended its meetings and was certainly employed by William Stuckeley and other Fellows. These engagements led to his massive project, undertaken with his brother Nathaniel, to record sites of antiquarian interest throughout England and Wales - by far the most extensive of a number of such efforts by topographical artists in the century. Between 1721 and 1745 the Bucks produced over 423 engravings of castles, monasteries, and other ruins and an additional eighty-seven prospects of English and Welsh cities and towns. These were gathered together and reissued in three volumes by the printseller Robert Sayer in 1774 as Buck's Antiquaries of venerable remains of above 400 Castles &c in England and Wales, with near 100 views of Cities. This is the finished drawing, worked up from pencil drawings made on the spot, for the engraving of Berwick upon Tweed that was published in 1745. The engraving reproduces the drawing at approximately the same size. The view of Berwick is typical of the "prospect," taken from an elevated vantage point at a sufficient distance that the town is clearly laid out for the viewer. Although related to an earlier tradition of schematic maplike representations of cities and towns seen from above, the Buck's presentation is an actual view.|n
Scott Wilcox

Wilcox, Forrester, O'Neil, Sloan. The Line of Beauty: British Drawings and Watercolors of the Eighteenth Century. Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, 2001. pg. 154 cat. no. 130