drawing
- Museum number
- 1862,0614.120
- Description
-
A Cowkeeper's shop in Golden Lane; a dairy shop, with name over the door, selling eggs, butter and cream, cows visible in stables beyond, man filling a churn of milk near the foreground. 1825
Watercolour
- Production date
- 1825
- Dimensions
-
Height: 140 millimetres
-
Width: 225 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- Catalogue entry from J.Kierkuc-Bielinski, 'George Scharf', exh. Soane Museum, 2009 (no. 44):
From the mid-eighteenth century London, as the capital of the largest maritime trading empire that had yet arisen, was probably the greatest shopping emporium of the globe. It was certainly the largest city in the world and its inhabitants became fashionable consumers. With his drawing 'Westminster Dairy in the Quadrant, Regent Street, near Piccadilly Circus' (1862,0614.122), Scharf examines the change in taste amongst Londoners. The two drawings were purposefully paired as Scharf explained on a note written on the recto: ‘This I drew in Golden Lane in order to compare it with an elegant milk shop in the Quadrant, Piccadilly’. Golden Lane, in the East End, was located in one of the less salubrious areas of the city and was a well-know hideout for thieves. Scharf has shown the old milk shop front; a plaster cow advertising the shop’s trade, recalls the old fashioned eighteenth-century shop signs that by the 1820s had been removed from the landscape of the street in more fashionable areas. Milk and eggs are being sold fresh from the animals from the counter to the left – at the back of the shop Scharf has clearly shown the cows waiting to be milked in their stalls.
See also Curator's comments 1862,0614.122
Selected literature: P. Jackson, 'George Scharf’s London: Sketches and Watercolours of a Changing City. 1820-50' (London, 1987); Peter Jackson MSS Index.
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
1992 Jun-Nov, Essen, Villa Hugel, London 1800-38, no. 113
2009 Mar-Jun, London, Sir John Soane Museum, George Scharf
- Acquisition date
- 1862
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1862,0614.120