drawing
- Museum number
- 1862,0614.31
- Description
-
Old Covent Garden Market; view from beneath the tiled roof of a stall, stacked with baskets of fruit, a man with a pair of scales, a woman nursing a baby, another kneeling over a stove, further timber-framed stalls and crowds beyond. 1825
Watercolour
- Production date
- 1825
- Dimensions
-
Height: 248 millimetres
-
Width: 379 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- Catalogue entry from J.Kierkuc-Bielinski, 'George Scharf', exh. Soane Museum, 2009 (no. 46):
The name Covent Garden derives from the fields that formerly belonged to Wesminster Abbey or ‘convent’. In the 1630s, Francis Russell, Fourth Duke of Bedford, commissioned Inigo Jones to design a magnificent new Italianate piazza on the land that would be the equivalent of the Places des Vosges in Paris. This would be the first of London’s great squares. By 1656, though, it was also the location of a temporary market that traded from the gardens of Bedford House. In 1670, this temporary market was granted a new licence allowing it to be held everyday apart from Sundays and Christmas Day. This allowed Covent Garden Market to grow and develop, becoming one of London’s busiest, crowded and chaotic markets. Scharf has shown the ramshackle wooden structures of the stalls, their lead roofs clearly visible, in this the north side of the market, which was probably one of the busiest areas. As there was no provision for storage in the open-sided stalls, goods and empty baskets were sometimes kept on the lead roofs. The lively Market also attracted many street entertainers (as it still does today). In his journal entry for 14 January 1837, Scharf describes: ‘…in going through Covent Garden Market I saw a stuffed shark, exhibited by a man, on a little wagon drawn by two dogs; it was very curious and about 12 feet long’. By the 1820s it was clear that the facilities of the old market were inadequate and in1828 a new act was passed for the regulation of trade. As part of this the old stalls, which Scharf had drawn, were to be replaced with the new market buildings, built by Charles Fowler (1792-1867), which stand to this day.
For related study see 1862,0614.51
Selected literature: S. O’Connell, et al., ‘London 1753’, exh. cat., The British Museum, 2003
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
1987 Apr-Aug, London, Museum of London, 'Londoners' Exhibition'
2009 Mar-Jun, London, Sir John Soane Museum, George Scharf
- Acquisition date
- 1862
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1862,0614.31
