“Turn your copper into silver before your eyes”
Last week, I published Paul Sandby’s twelve plates of Cries of London, 1760 and today I present a gallery of his sketches held by the Yale Centre for British Art, selected from around a hundred drawings Sandby made of the hawkers and vendors he encountered in the streets around his house in Carnaby Market. The dirty realism of Sandby’s portraits of street traders proved unpopular among the print buyers of his day and 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, yet – ironically – the unsentimental quality of Sandby’s human observation that rendered these Cries a disappointment in his day is precisely what makes them appealing to us.
Hawker with donkey and panniers
Flower Seller
Seller of pots and pans
Fishmonger
“Lights for the cats, liver for the dogs”
Shoe cleaner
Seller of laces
“Do you want any spoons?”
“All fire and no smoke”
Black-hearted cherries
Man with a bottle
“Throws for a ha’penny. Have you a ha’penny?”
“Any kitchen stuff”
Muffin Man
Tinker and his wife
“Small coal or brushes”
“Last dying speech and confession”
Mountebank
Orange Seller
Old Clothes Seller
Milk Maid
“Fun upon fun!”
“My Pretty Little Ginny Tarters for a Ha’penny a Stick or a Penny a Stick, or a Stick to Beat your Wives or Dust your Clothes”
Images courtesy Yale Centre for British Art
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