Wapping Old Stairs, Thomas Rowlandson, 1814.

I spotted this nice watercolour scene by Rowlandson in an auction catalogue this morning.

It shows a group of pedestrians descending Wapping Old Stairs towards a small wherry which is being loaded with passengers wishing to cross the River Thames. A young girl and her elderly father stand closest to the viewer. The old man is a former soldier, dressed in a pensioners uniform, who hobbles along on a wooden leg with the help of his daughter and his walking stick. Ahead of them strides a young soldier, perhaps heading off to join his regiment, who carries a large drum on his back and a sheathed sword in his hand. He is being greeted with great enthusiasm by an oarsman who is no doubt attempting to lure him into another nearby boat with the promise of a reduced fair or a quicker crossing. Behind them, beneath the windows of the inn, a woman, presumably a prostitute, canoodles with a bearded man. In the distance, oarsmen can be seen helping other passengers onto a rowing boat next to the indistinct form of the bow of a collier ship. The scene plays out beneath the open windows of The Salutation public house, whose proprietor, according to the sign which hangs above is a Mr Ben Block. A group of carousers can be seen inside, drinking smoking and consorting with the working girls who evidently frequent the place.

Rowlandson had engraved a similar caricature for Thomas Tegg’s Miseries of London series in 1812. This watercolour version is set further back from the waterline and has a slightly smuttier subtext, placing a greater, albeit still subtle, emphasis on the more debauched aspects of London’s docksides. Some elements of the drawing are based on real life, Wapping Old Stairs and the eighteenth-century public house which stands next to them are still there today. However, the pub in question was (and still is) named The Town of Ramsgate. Rowlandson presumably changed it to The Salutation as a punning reference to the various forms of greeting which are taking place in the street outside. Ben Block was a contemporary placeholder name, similar to ‘Joe Bloggs’ or ‘John Doe’ today, and is probably also fictitious. The watercolour may have been a preparatory sketch for the 1812 engraving that Rowlandson kept and subsequently sold, or he may simply have regurgitated the idea two years later in order to turn out an original piece for a collector.

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‘Old Q’ Snuff Box c.1800

This snuff box was the latest caricature-related item to catch my eye whilst browsing through sales catalogues. It’s decorated with an engraved copy of Thomas Rowlandson’s caricature of the Duke of Queensburry (1725 – 1810). Queensbury was the archetypal dirty old man and his sexual exploits became the stuff of legend in late eighteenth-century London. By the 1790s he had become the subject of mocking caricatures, most notably Robert Dighton’s 1796 effort Old q-uiz the old goat of Piccadilly, which shows the elderly Duke, laden down with rejuvenating tonics (the contemporary alternative to Viagra), sidling up to a young prostitute on the street.

Interestingly, Rowlandson’s image of Old Q is only known to exist as a original work entitled A Worn Out Debauchee which now resides in the Paul Mellon Collection. The artist is thought to have produced his original version sometime during the first half of the 1790s. Given that Rowlandson sold his original works to the great and the good of late-Hanoverian London, and that it’s highly unlikely that a humble brassware manufacturer would have had access to the drawing room of A Worn Out Debauchee‘s first owner, there surely must have been a printed version from which this image was copied? If that was the case then it appears as though this printed edition is now lost, as I’ve been unable to locate any reference to it.

Thomas Rowlandson, Grog on Board, ink and watercolour

This seems like a fitting image to take us into the weekend. An original ink and watercolour wash by Thomas Rowlandson, whose signature appears at the bottom left-hand corner of the paper. It measures approximately 11.5 x 15 inches.

The image was originally engraved for the publisher S.W. Fores, who issued it under the title Grog on Board in January 1789. It was originally accompanied by a companion piece titled Tea on Shore, in which the raucous debauchery of the sailors is compared with a polite society gathering.

I suspect that this is a later version, drawn after the engraving was issued and possibly dating to the 1800s – 1810s, when the publisher Rudolph Ackermann began selling traced copies of the artist’s original works. It looks a bit too similar to the engraving to have been an original sketch that was produced off the cuff. The tone and application of the colouring also appears different (at least to my eye) than the thin washes of delicate colour that Rowlandson usually applied to his watercolours.

This picture is due to come up at auction in a couple of weeks. It carries an estimate of £600 – £800. Personally, I can’t quite make up my mind about it. It may be a genuine original, or a ‘licensed copy’ of the kind Ackermann is known to have produced. Alternatively, it could simply be a contemporary amateur copy which has subsequently been passed off as an original?

Perhaps something to mull over as I prepare to sail off into the weekend with a healthy cargo of grog on board.

A collection of original works by Thomas Rowlandson

There’s a veritable flood tide of original works by Thomas Rowlandson coming up for auction in the UK at the moment. These include genre scenes, character studies and a few humorous pictures. Perhaps the most interesting is The Wigsteads: A Christening which depicts Rowlandson’s friend and fellow caricaturist Henry Wigstead (1745 – 1800) and his family. Although I also have a soft spot for the untitled caricature of a group of drunken students being sternly regarded by their tutors. It appears as though some things never change.

I should point out, before anyone gets all excited and starts emailing me to enquire whether I’d be willing to sell this drawing or that drawing, that none of these pictures belong to me and I’m not offering them for sale. The images are taken from various sale catalogues and are being shared here in order to record original works which would otherwise disappear into anonymous private collections once the auctions have taken place.

 ‘The Afternoon Visit’, n.d., pen, ink and watercolour, 15 x 24cm

‘The patient’, n.d., pen, ink and watercolour 16.5 x 11.5cm

‘Interior scene’, n.d., pen, ink and watercolour, 10 x 17.5cm

The Wigsteads: A Christening, n.d., pen, ink and watercolour 17 x 30cm

 

‘Outside the Oyster Room’, n.d., pen, ink and watercolour, 13 x 9.5cm

Chamber Council, n.d., pen, ink and watercolour, 15 x 19cm

Oakhampton, Cornwall, 1816, pen, ink and watercolour, 16.5 x 24cm

 

‘At the Cottage Door’, n.d., pen, ink and watercolour, 14.25 x 9.5cm

 

 

‘Student drinking club’, n.d., pen, ink and watercolour, 26.5 x 32.5 cm

 

 

Thomas Rowlandson, The Fire at the Key, 1806

Shortly before midnight on 4th June 1806, a heavily inebriated man stumbled through the door of the Key Hotel in Chandos Street and ordered a meal. He was a cheerful character in his late 30s, and he dressed in a refined if somewhat sombre fashion which led many casual observers to assume that he was a priest of some kind. Unfortunately, his dress was the only sober thing about him that evening, as member of staff at the Key would later attest that he had visited the establishment several times in the last few weeks and was always the worse for drink.

The guest washed his meal down with a bottle of wine and ordered a further two bottles to be taken up to his room. The historical sources are silent on the quality of the repast but it probably mattered little to our friend, as food, drink, and accommodation, were all incidental to the main service that The Key provided to its guests; it was one of the most notorious bagnios in all of early nineteenth-century London and allowed resident and strolling prostitutes alike to ply their trade openly within its walls.

At around 2.30am the guest retired to bed with a young lady. A chambermaid was dispatched to their room a few minutes later in order to help the prostitute undress, but she reported that the man had passed out in stupor on the bedroom floor and that his companion had gone to bed without him. Fearing that he might wake up in the night and not know where he was, she lit a candle and left it on the floor next to the man before returning downstairs. Fifteen minutes later, the hotel was filled with sound of a woman screaming. A waiter, who ran up from the dining hall, found the prostitute standing on the landing in her night gown in hysterics, thick smoke and the flicker of flames emanating from the open bedroom doorway next to her.

The room was already engulfed in flames and the waiter immediately concluded that any attempt to rescue the drunken guest would be folly. Instead, he calmed the young lady and they then ran from door to door, rousing the other guests and alerting them to the danger. Chaos ensued as half-dressed working girls and their unsuspecting punters scrambled to save themselves. Many panicked, being unaware that the fire had yet to properly take hold of the building, and clambered from first floor windows, dropping into the street below. Their desperation was such that one old man, whose clothing had become entangled as he tried to escape, was left dangling above the street in ignominy; until someone was eventually able to haul him back into the hotel and help him flee via another route.

Crowds assembled in Hanoverian London at the drop of a hat and the spectacle of the Key’s destruction provoked a large assembly of slack-jawed gawkers, who mingled indiscriminately with hard-pressed parish fire-fighters and stunned prostitutes, as the building collapsed in front of them. It seems likely that Thomas Rowlandson was amongst the crowd, as his apartment in the Adelphi Buildings was just a few minutes walk from Chandos Street and would surely have been within earshot of the commotion. He later produced this watercolour of the scene, which is it seems safe to assume was heavily embellished with some of his stock comic characters in order to add humour and vitality to the proceedings.

Thomas Rowlandson, pen, ink and wash, 14.5 x 24cm. Signed and titled ‘The Fire at The Key, Chandos Street’.

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Notes
The European Magazine, and London Review, Volume 49 pp. 480 – 1.
Morning Chronicle, Friday 6th & 7th June 1806
Caledonian Mercury, 15th August 1806