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Creator:
Samuel Scott, 1701/2–1772
Title:

A View of the Tower of London, Supposed on his Majesty's Birthday [YCBA, 2016]

Former Title(s):

The Thames and the Tower of London Supposedly on the King's Birthday [1985, Cormack, YCBA Concise Catalogue]

A view of the Tower of London, supposed on his Majesty's birth-day. [1771, Royal Academy of Arts, London, exhibition catalogue]

Date:
1771
Medium:
Oil on canvas
Dimensions:
39 3/4 x 76 inches (101 x 193 cm)
Inscription(s)/Marks/Lettering:

signed and dated 1771

Credit Line:
Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
Copyright Status:
Public Domain
Accession Number:
B1976.7.147
Classification:
Paintings
Collection:
Paintings and Sculpture
Link to Frame:
B1976.7.147FR
Subject Terms:
architectural subject | architecture | barges (flat-bottomed watercraft) | birthday | buildings | cannons | castle | celebrations | city | cityscape | costume | flags | ketch (fore-and-aft-rigged vessel) | king (person) | marine art | men | people | river | ships | smoke
Associated Places:
England | Greater London | St. Paul's Cathedral | Thames | Tower of London | United Kingdom
Access:
Not on view
Note: To make an appointment to see this work, please contact the Paintings and Sculpture department at ycba.paintings@yale.edu. Please visit the Paintings and Sculpture collections page on our website for more details.
Link:
https://collections.britishart.yale.edu/catalog/tms:366
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This is the only painting Samuel Scott exhibited at the Royal Academy, shown there in the year before his death. The view is taken from the south bank of the Thames, looking across to the Tower of London. Immediately to the left of the mast in the foreground is the Monument to the Great Fire of London, and to its left, St. Paul’s Cathedral. The vessel in the foreground is a Dutch galliot, about to take on a cargo that includes barrels, bales, and jars. The naval frigate moored alongside the Tower fires a salute in recognition of the king’s birthday, likewise acknowledged by the Royal Standard flown from the White Tower. The image thus realizes a vision of London, and by extension of Britain, suggested in Scott’s riverine sketches: a confluence of church, state, crown, and commerce. The part of the river shown here is the Pool of London, the area below London Bridge, lined with wharves and quays, where all cargo entering the Port of London was unloaded and inspected. The density of shipping in the Pool became a potent image of the volume and extent of British commerce throughout the eighteenth century. The Pool’s inadequacy for the volume of commerce led at the turn of the nineteenth century to construction of the West and East India Docks, which drastically reduced the time it took to discharge cargo and enabled ships to make more trading voyages within a given season.

Gallery label for Spreading Canvas - Eighteenth-Century British Marine Painting (Yale Center for British Art, 2016-09-09 - 2016-12-04)


Samuel Scott was regarded as one of the finest painters of his generation, and this view of the Thames with the Tower of London is among the last and most ambitious of his paintings. It was made while Scott was living in semiretirement in Bath and shows the annual celebrations marking King George III’s birthday on June 4. The king’s enormous Royal Standard flies from the White Tower, and salutes are fired from the cannon on the wharf and from the approaching royal ship. The scene, complete with English and Dutch trading vessels, suggests that peace and prosperity flow from the benevolent rule of the Hanoverian king. Scott exhibited this picture at the Royal Academy in 1771, the only picture he ever exhibited there.

Gallery label for installation of YCBA collection, 2016

Spreading Canvas - Eighteenth - Century British Marine Painting (Yale Center for British Art, 2016-09-09 - 2016-12-04) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition] [Exhibition Description]

Canaletto to Constable: Paintings of Town and Country from the Yale Center for British Art (Ferrara Galleries of Modern & Contemporary Art, 2001-02-25 - 2001-05-20) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

Canaletto to Constable: Paintings of Town and Country from the Yale Center for British Art (The Grand Rapids Art Museum, 1999-10-22 - 2000-01-02) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

Canaletto to Constable: Paintings of Town and Country from the Yale Center for British Art (Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, 1998-02-08 - 1998-04-26) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

Crown Pictorial - Art and the British Monarchy (Yale Center for British Art, 1990-12-05 - 1991-02-17) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

Georgian Canada - Conflict and Culture (Royal Ontario Museum, 1984-05-01 - 1984-11-01) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

C. H. Collins Baker, British Painting, The Medici Society, Ltd., London, 1933, p. 84, ND461 B35 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Laura Beach, Spreading Canvas : Eighteenth-Centry British Marine Painting, Antiques and the Arts Weekly, vol. 48, Bee Publishing Company, Newtown, November 4, 2016, p. 30, Vertical File V 2718 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Canaletto and His Influence on London Artists, The Guildhall Art Gallery, July 1965, p. 12, cat. 18, NJ18 C17 G85 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Canaletto to Constable : paintings of town and country from the Yale Center for British Art, , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Conn., 1998, pp. 9, 65, pl. 20, ND1354.4 Y25 1998 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Linda Colley, Crown Pictorial : Art and the British Monarchy : Exhibition Labels, , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, 1990, pp. 65-66, no. 168, N8219 K5 C761 1990 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Linda Colley, Crown Pictorial : Art and the British Monarchy, , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, 1990, p. 44, no. 168, N8219 K5 C76 1990 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Malcolm Cormack, Concise Catalogue of Paintings in the Yale Center for British Art, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 1985, pp. 200-201, N590.2 A83 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Cover, Virginia Cavalcade, 37, Virginia State Library and Archives, Richmond, Winter 1988, Cover, CL1 015 37 (SML) [ORBIS]

Markman Ellis, River and Labour in Samuel Scott's Thames Views in the Mid-Eighteenth Century, London Journal, vol. 37, November 2012, pp. 155-56, fig. 1, Available online : ORBIS (in Taylor $ Francis Online) [ORBIS]

Exhibition of the Royal Academy 1771, 1, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1771, p. 17, cat. 179, N5054 A53 1-13 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Hilda F. Finberg, Canaletto in England, Volume of the Walpole Society, vol. IX, 1920-1921, p. 50, N12 W35 +A1 v.9 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Luke Herrmann, British landscape painting of the eighteenth century., Faber & Faber, London, 1973, p. 32, pl. 20, ND1354.4 H47 1973 + (YCBA) [YCBA]

Highly Important Old Master Paintings, Sotheby's, London, March 24, 1965, p. 54, lot 91, Sales Catalogues (YCBA)

Eleanor Hughes, Spreading Canvas : Eighteenth-Century British Marine Painting, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, 2016, p. 227, cat. 88, ND 1373.G74 S67 2016 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Richard Kingzett, Catalogue of the Works of Samuel Scott, Volume of the Walpole Society, vol. 48, Walpole Society, Oxford, 1982, pp. 49, 51-52, H, N12 W35 A1 48+ (YCBA) [YCBA]

Donald Blake Webster, Conflict and Culture, 1745-1820, Royal Ontario Museum, Ontario, 1984, p. 42-43, cat. 2, N6546 O6 W42 (YCBA) [YCBA]

William Thomas Whitley, Artists and their friends in England, 1700-1799, Medici Society, London & Boston, 1928, p. 205, N6766 W45 (YCBA) [YCBA]


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