print
- Museum number
- 1871,0812.5347
- Title
- Object: The Royal Vauxhall Nassau Balloon
- Description
-
The striped balloon ascending, with two figures in a basket in the middle, pulling a parachute below which lifts Robert Cocking in a lower basket who holds a flag, trees below; two images below showing the iron and the rope; with a scale
Lithograph
- Production date
- 1837
- Dimensions
-
Height: 465 millimetres (ruled border)
-
Width: 290 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- The propietors of Vauxhall Gardens had this print made as a souvenir item, presumably before Cocking's fatal accident on first testing it in 1837.
Edward William Cocks painted the decoration shown on Cocking's fatal rigid parachute in his role as the resident scene-painter at Vauxhall Gardens.
(Information supplied by Dr Pieter van der Merwe via email, January 2016).
For various other representations of this parachute and a description of its disastrous end, see ff,459, 461, 463-465, 467 of J H Burn's collection of cuttings, 'Historical Collection relating to Spring Gardens, Charing Cross, and to Vauxhall Gardens' in the British Library, shelfmark CUP 401 k 7 (information supplied by Martin Hopkinson via email, September 2015).
- Location
- Not on display
- Associated events
- Associated Event: Cocking's parachute 1837
- Acquisition date
- 1871
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1871,0812.5347
