The Building of Westminster Bridge | |
---|---|
Artist | Samuel Scott |
Year | 1742 |
Type | Oil on canvas, history painting |
Dimensions | 69 cm× 120 cm(27 in× 47 in) |
Location | Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut |
The Building of Westminster Bridge is a 1742 riverscape painting by the English artist Samuel Scott. [1] It depicts the construction of Westminster Bridge across the River Thames in London. Visible on the skyline are St John's, Smith Square, Westminster Hall, Westminster Abbey and the tower St Margaret's. [2]
It was the city's second bridge across the Thames following the medieval era London Bridge, built from 1739 and opening in 1750 to a design by the architect Charles Labelye. It was built from the centre outwards and by the time Scott sketched it is had four arches under construction. [3] Scott was a pioneering British maritime painter who increasingly turned to views of Thames. His contemporary Canaletto also painted the bridge several times during his period in England. [4] It was also notably painted in its incomplete state by Richard Wilson. [5]
It is viewed from a timber yard on the southern bank of the Thames and features two engineering innovations used on the project, a sinking caisson and a horse-powered pile driver. Several versions of the painting exist. One held by the Yale Center for British Art is notable for including both the towers under construction at Westminster Abbey and a planned spire that was never actually built. [6] These do not appear on the version in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. That work does feature the Lord Mayor's barge approaching the construction site. [3]
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Samuel Scott was a British landscape painter known for his riverside scenes and seascapes.
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The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons, 16th October, 1834 is the title of two oil on canvas paintings by J. M. W. Turner, depicting different views of the fire that broke out at the Houses of Parliament on the evening of 16 October 1834. They are now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Cleveland Museum of Art.
The Grand Canal in Venice from Palazzo Flangini to Campo San Marcuola is a painting by Canaletto in the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, California. Painted around 1738, it may have been commissioned by the English merchant and art collector Joseph Smith (1682–1770).
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A Panoramic View of London, from the Tower of St. Margaret's Church, Westminster is a painting made in 1815 by Pierre Prévost, acquired by the Museum of London in July 2018. It is particularly significant for its depiction of the pre-1834 Palace of Westminster.
West London is the western part of London, England, north of the River Thames, west of the City of London, and extending to the Greater London boundary.
Portrait of Lady Maria Conyngham is an 1825 portrait painting by the British artist Sir Thomas Lawrence. It depicts Maria Conyingham, the younger of two daughters of the Anglo-Irish aristocrat Henry Conyngham, 1st Marquess Conyngham and his wife Elizabeth. Her mother was the mistress of George IV from 1820.