Vauxhall Gardens
Rowlandson, Thomas (1756 or 1757-1827)
- Yale Center for British Art
Paul Mellon Collection[Museum inv. no.: B1975.4.1844]
Item location
Description
This work presents a crowded scene of people enjoying socializing and participating in leisure activities at the Vauxhall Gardens; professional musicians (including a singer and players of a variety of instruments) are performing from a pavilion balcony on the left, and a single hurdy-gurdy player can be seen with a small group of non-musicians gathered under trees in the background on the right. ------CURATORIAL COMMENT FROM MUSEUM WEBSITE:
Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens had been a fashionable resort since the times of Charles II. In 1732 the gardens reopened to the public after extensive renovations under the proprietership of Jonathan tyers. The entrepreneurial tyers has the gardens embellished with walks, ruins, statues, Chinese pavilions, triumphal arches, and a "Gothik" orchestra, and his continuing program of improvements included several important art commissions, most notably Luis-François Roubiliac's celebrated statue of Handel, four patriotic modern history subjects by Francis Hayman, and an extensive sequence of decorative paintings designed for the supper-boxes by Hayman, and an extensive sequence of decorative paintings designed for the supper-boxes by Hayman and William Hogarth. Vauxhall was almost universally popular, despite (or because of it) its reputation for frivolity and moral laxity, and typified the egalitarian nature of British social life of the period. James Boswell, and inveterate commentator on metropolitan life observed: Vauxhall Gardens is peculiarly adapted to the taste of the English nation; there being a mixture of curious show - gay exhibition, musick, vocal and instrumental, not too refined for the general ear; - for all which only shilling paid. And, though last, not least, good eating and drinking for those who wish to purchase the regale. Rowlandson frequently visited Vauxhall, finding there, as his friend Henry Angelo noted, "plenty of employment for his pencil." The subject of his watercolor is the orchestra outside the Rotunda during and evening concert. The concert was one of the few professional ensembles of the period, renowned for the high quality of its playing. Many of the figures can be tentatively identified, including the Prince Regent whispering to the actress "Perdita Robinson, his former lover, shown arm-in-arm with her husband, and, in the foreground, the playwright and dandy Edward Topham peering through his monocle or "quizzing glass" at Georgina, Duchess of Devonshire, and her sister Harriet (see cat. 7).
--Gillian Forrester,2001-05
Iconclass
48CC7531large group of musicians, orchestra - CC - out of doors
48CC75512
female singer - CC - out of doors
48CC78
listening to music - CC - out of doors
41C1
eating and drinking
43D
other leisure time activities
33A35
conversation, dialogue; conversation piece
43
recreation, amusement
Instruments [MIMO Code] (notes)
Lute [3394]Violin [3573]
Oboe [4232]
Bassoon [3795]
Kettledrum [2887] (pair; with beaters)
Natural trumpet [4419]
RIdIM images
Image URLs
image link 1Bibliographic references
Barringer, Timothy J. Art & music in Britain: Four encounters, 1730-1900 (New Haven: Yale Center for British Art, 2006) 6-7, 12, 37.Conlin, Jonathan. The pleasure garden: From Vauxhall to Coney Island (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013) 113, fig. 4.4.
Phagan, Patricia. Thomas Rowlandson: Pleasures and pursuits in Georgian England (Poughkeepsie, N.Y.; London: Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, 2011) 58-59, no. 1.
Notes
FROM THE MUSEUM WEBSITE:Inscribed in black ink, on mount, lower left: "Thomas Rowlandson. (underlined) - Old Vauxhall Gardens (underlined) - The earliest version of the subject. | Mrs. Weischel, mother of Mrs. Billington, singing in the orchestra. Portraits of the Prince of Wales, Mrs. Robinson and her husband, | Duchess of Devonshire, Lady Duncannon, Captain Topham, Admiral Paisley, James Perry, Parson Bate Dudley, Mrs. Hartley and others. | In a supper-box, Dr. Johnson, Boswell, Mrs. Thrale, and Oliver Goldsmith. ----"; in black ink, on mount, lower right: "Ce dessin provient de la collection de Sir William Aug. Fraser, Bart M.A. | I la figure en 1899 a I'exposition des oeuvres des 'English humourists in Art' | No. 32 du catalogue. - Cette exposition eut lieu dans les galeries du | 'Royal Institue of Painters in Water-colours.'---"
Collector's stamp of L.S. Delatigny (Lugt 1768a), lower left