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A version of The Concert served as the second plate in Rowlandson's Comforts of Bath, though none of the aquatints was given a specific title. The first public concerts had been pioneered in London at the end of the seventeenth century, and by the end of the eighteenth century, the taste for concerts had become a craze. In 1788 one contemporary composer joked: "All the Modish World appear/ Fond of nothing Else my dear./ Folks of Fashion eager seek/ Sixteen Concerts in a Week." Some of the finest musicians and composers in the world-including Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809)-flocked to London to enjoy the unprecedented appreciation of musical entertainments. Even as early as 1771, Smollett's Lydia Melford could report the existence of "concerts every other night" as one of the civilized pleasures of Bath.

The singer in this drawing of a Bath concert has been identified as the German performer Gertrud Elizabeth Mara (1749-1833), who lived in England between 1784 and 1802. She had provoked a public scandal in 1794 by arriving in Bath with her lover Charles Florio, having left her husband behind in London.Rowlandson's drawing questions whether every member of the audience has really come to hear the famous soprano's musical talents, or for less high-minded motives. A gentleman in red listens attentively to the music, but meanwhile two women in the front row vie for his attention. At the back, a lecherous old man attempts to charm an uninterested young woman, while others are clearly deep in conversation, oblivious to the music. One drunken man at the front has even lost consciousness. Such goings-on certainly were not uncommon. Conversation was the norm at concerts, however much performers resented it; even Haydn suffered the ultimate insult of people sleeping through his symphonies. He once complained about "gentlemen" staggering into his concerts halfway through the performance, only to fall asleep from drinking too much after-dinner port.

Rowlandson used his customary pen line to sketch the concert, frequently employing a visual shorthand to avoid rendering the scene in meticulous detail. The plaster decorations and paneling are treated as cursory lines, with only the foreground figures and singer herself drawn with detail. A faint gray wash is all that is used to define the audience and musicians, with just the odd wash of red for faces and clothes. This muted color scheme was probably intended for a collector, for it is at odds with the published aquatints intended for a broader audience which he colored with garish reds, yellows, greens, and blues.

Matthew Hargraves

Hargraves, Matthew, and Scott Wilcox. Great British Watercolors: from the Paul Mellon collection. New Haven: Yale Center for British Art, 2007, p. 56, no. 22