Portrait of Paul Sandby - Francis Cotes - 1761 - Tate Britain, London, UK
This gallery presents a limited few of the one hundred or so drawings/sketches, and watercolors Sandby did of London's street traders, sellers, and hawkers in 1759. Many of these are taken from the Yale Center of British Art (Paul Mellon Collection). Links to the Yale Center, as well as additional links concerning Paul Sandby and his art, may be found in the main menu or, alternatively, HERE.
"Sandby's street drawings are the first in which the traders as portrayed as filthy and there is no doubt that the mackerel seller would have smelled foul too. Each of these sellers is a portrait of an individual, not just a social type as was the case in earlier series but, more than this, we have characters placed in a dramatic relationship to the world and, in many cases, stories that tell us of their circumstance.
Far from merely picturesque, these hawkers confront us in ways that we might choose to avoid. The ballad seller proffering two parts of ‘Kitty Fisher’ was known to work with a pickpocket, while the seller of switches for the distribution of domestic punishment raises his arm as if he is about to lash out at us. The provocation offered by the low-bodiced woman offering nosegays and notebooks is overtly sexual, and her expectant posture turns the use of ‘Your honour’ into a challenge.
Yet the lack of sentiment does not ever reduce Paul’s subjects but, rather, grants them power and independent existence beyond his portrayal. No longer rendered as the amusing curiosities of earlier Cries, these hawkers are the first to demand our respect. While, in life, we might take detours or do almost anything to avoid them, these prints offer a more complex and troubling political relationship between sellers and buyers than had been described before".
The Gentle Author - Spitalsfield Life
In 1760, Paul Sandby moved to London from Winsor where he began to draw the underclass of street traders and hawkers with a new realism. In total, he made around a hundred drawings of the hawkers and vendors he encountered in the streets around his house in Carnaby Market. In that year, he had published Twelve London Cries Done from the life, Part 1st. These twelve were prints made from his etchings,engravings. These images are presented in this gallery. Although the title of this work suggests plans for additional prints he never published any more engravings from his watercolour sketches. He had already designed the title page for another series with the intention of turning all his sketches into prints, but the unsentimental quality of Sandby’s human observation rendered these Cries a disappointment in their time.
