Thomas Rowlandson, English, 1756-1827
Title: Wapping Old Stairs, London; an ?Elopement (on verso)
Date: c.1810
Medium: Graphite, ink and watercolour on paper; graphite on verso
Dimensions:
27 x 21.7 cm
Credit Line: Purchased, 1910
Object Number: NGI.2640
DescriptionRowlandson’s hugely popular comic drawings or ‘drolls’ satirized all classes of society and were widely reproduced as prints. This drawing depicts a large gathering of people including old sailors, buxom girls, and soldiers on one of the old stairs which gave access to the Thames from the crowded, narrow streets of Wapping. It was a noisy, smelly, boisterous place, crammed with businesses that supplied the ships lining the nearby docks.
Exhibition HistoryMaster European Drawings From the Collection of the National Gallery of Ireland, Ackland Art Museum, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Colorado Springs Fine Arts Centre, Colorado; Art Gallery, University of Maryland, College Park; Milwaukee Art Museum, Wisconsin; Pierpont Morgan Library, New York; Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indiana; The Minneapolis Museum of Art, Minnesota; The Santa Barbara Museum of Art, California; National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, 1983
Inscriptionlower right (in ink): Wapping Old Stairs