A View of the Thames with the York Buildings Water Tower

Catalogue entry

N01328 A View of the Thames with the York Buildings Water Tower ?c.1760–70

Oil on canvas 603×1105 (23 3/4×43 1/8)
Purchased by the National Gallery out of the Wheeler Fund 1891; transferred to the Tate Gallery 1891
PROVENANCE ...; Colnaghi, from whom bt by the National Gallery 1891 (as by Samuel Scott)

This is a copy, by a competent but probably unidentifiable near-contemporary, of a subject by Samuel Scott of which Kingzett 1982 (pp.54–5) catalogues three versions. The copyist probably worked from version C, which shows the final arch of the bridge fully built and is likely to have been commissioned to celebrate its completion in 1750. As Kingzett notes, Canaletto made a drawing and two paintings from almost the same viewpoint, and may have been working from Scott's first study for his picture, or more probably from Scott's first version of it, painted c.1742–3.

The subject was evidently a popular one. Other copies by unknown hands have passed through the art market; the copyists usually follow Scott's architectural details, but provide their own variations, as the artist of N01328 does, on the shipping and figures.

Published in:
Elizabeth Einberg and Judy Egerton, The Age of Hogarth: British Painters Born 1675-1709, Tate Gallery Collections, II, London 1988

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