Oil picture. 50 by 31 in.
In the foreground is a man seated on a rail, with what looks like a
plan or drawing in his left hand. He turns to the spectator and, with
his right, points in the direction of Spencer House, the park front
of which still remains unaltered. This figure, in all likelihood,
represents John Vardy, the architect who designed it. The pond is
wrongly named Rosamond’s Pond on the frame. It is mentioned in the
Calendar of Treasury Papers, 9 June 1725, as a “canal or basin lately
made over against Devonshire House,” and was soon afterwards converted
into a reservoir of Chelsea Waterworks. A walk by it, planted with
trees, was called the Queen’s Walk. This reservoir was enlarged in
1729, and filled up in 1856. The Green Park Rosamond’s Pond was in
the old bed of the Tyburn, much farther west. A more famous Rosamond’s
Pond, in St. James’s Park, disappeared 1770. All three are marked on
Rocque’s map of 1746. The figures scattered about the foreground and
reflected in the water show very well the costume of the period. In
the distance is Buckingham House (see No. 48).
By W. HOGARTH, 1760 (1697-1764).
_Lent by the Earl Spencer._
69 NORTHUMBERLAND HOUSE, KING CHARLES’S STATUE, AND THE GOLDEN CROSS,
CHARING CROSS.
Oil picture. 16 by 9 in.
This historic mansion was built _c._ 1605 for Henry Howard, Earl of
Northampton, and left by him to his nephew, Thomas Howard, Earl of
Suffolk. It came to the Percys through the marriage, in 1642, of
the daughter of the second Earl of Suffolk with the tenth Earl of
Northumberland. The house was sold under the compulsory clause of
an Act of Parliament in 1873, and Northumberland Avenue covers the
site. The lion on the front is of lead, and is now at Syon House,
Isleworth. The statue of Charles I was the work of Hubert Le Sœur, and
the pedestal, according to Horace Walpole, was by Grinling Gibbons,
but it is now generally assigned to Joshua Marshall, master mason. On
the left appears the famous old Golden Cross coaching inn, its sign
overhanging the roadway. It was rebuilt in 1832. An engraving of this
design, issued in 1753, has on it “Canaletti pinxt et delint.—T
Bowles sculpt.” It was republished by Laurie and Whittle in 1794.
By CANALETTO, 1697-1768.
_Lent by the Marquess of Sligo._