Watercolour. 9¾ by 8½ in.
Signed “T. Rowlandson.” Written in pencil, but hidden, are the words:
“Richard Trevithick’s Railroad, Euston Square 1809.” In fact, the
Square dates only from 1825; as late as 1820 its site was a large
nursery garden, and a group of farm buildings occupied ground on which
the London and North Western Railway now stands. Trevithic, “father
of the locomotive engine,” the main facts of whose remarkable career
are recorded in “Dict. Nat. Biog.,” must have hired the ground in
order to test and exhibit his invention.
In the distance is Primrose Hill, with Hampstead beyond. Attractive
design and colour give charm to a subject not easy of treatment.
Rowlandson, trained in Paris and at the Academy schools, was an
accomplished artist, capable of something much more refined than his
clever caricatures, which most people know by coarse reproductions
of them.
By T. ROWLANDSON, 1809 (1756-1827).
_Lent by Mr. H. C. Levis._