Oil paint on canvas
Tate Collection
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Robert Vernon
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<a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/samuel-scott-480" aria-label="More by Samuel Scott" data-gtm-name="header_link_artist" data-gtm-destination="page--artist">Samuel Scott</a>
A London Bridge before Late Alterations
Presented by Robert Vernon 1847
adults
architecture
boat, barge
boat, rowing
bridge
bridges and viaducts
church
England
features
group
groups
house
London Bridge
man
Monument
monument
monuments
people
places
public and municipal
religious
residential
river
River Thames
ship, sailing
shop
society
spire
St Magnus King and Martyr’s Church
townscapes / man-made features
transport: water
UK countries and regions
UK London
UK natural features
water: inland
waterfront
<p>Scott's view of Old London Bridge was taken shortly before the demolition of its buildings in 1760. Several versions of the picture exist and it was also engraved, evidence of its popularity and people's nostalgia for the way the bridge used to look. One of London's great landmarks, inevitably it had undergone extensive alterations in its 650 year history. Due to fire and decay, buildings had been demolished and rebuilt. However, the features Scott depicts are all identifiable. On the left is the Great Stone Gateway; in the middle a group of houses, known as 'The Middle', with roof gardens; and on the far left 'The Piazza', a group of elegant colonnaded shops. Through the masts of the ship the Monument can be seen.</p><p><em>Gallery label, August 2004</em></p>
painting oil paint canvas
26 March 2015 – 27 May 2020
2020-05-27
26 March 2015 – 21 June 2015
2015-06-21
2015-03-26
Museo Nacional de Arte (Mexico City, Mexico)
18 July 2015 – 18 October 2015
2015-10-18
2015-07-18
Pinacoteca do Estado (São Paulo, Brazil)
27 April 2018 – 5 August 2018
2018-08-05
2018-04-27
Shanghai Art Museum (Shanghai, China)
4 September 2018 – 13 November 2018
2018-11-13
2018-09-04
National Art Museum of China (Beijing, China)
2015-03-26
British Landscape
Tate partnerships & programmes
A View of London Bridge before the Late Alterations
support: 286 × 546 mm
frame: 440 × 693 × 70 mm
Presented by <a href="/search?gid=999999978" data-gtm-name="tombstone_link_bequest" data-gtm-destination="list-page--search-results">Robert Vernon</a> 1847
<p>Scott's view of Old London Bridge was taken shortly before the demolition of its buildings in 1760. Several versions of the picture exist and it was also <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/e/engraving" title="Glossary definition for 'Engraving'"><span>engraved</span></a>, evidence of its popularity and people's nostalgia for the way the bridge used to look. One of London's great landmarks, inevitably it had undergone extensive alterations in its 650 year history. Due to fire and decay, buildings had been demolished and rebuilt. However, the features Scott depicts are all identifiable. On the left is the Great Stone Gateway; in the middle a group of houses, known as 'The Middle', with roof gardens; and on the far left 'The Piazza', a group of elegant colonnaded shops. Through the masts of the ship the Monument can be seen.</p>
Display caption
2004-08-18T00:00:00
display-caption
DISPLAY_CAPTION
<p><a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/scott-a-view-of-london-bridge-before-the-late-alterations-n00313" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N00313</span></a> <b>A View of London Bridge before the Late Alterations</b> engr. 1758
<br/></p>
<p>Oil on canvas 285×545 (11 1/4×21 1/2)
<br/>Presented by Robert Vernon to the National Gallery 1847; transferred to the Tate Gallery 1919
<br/>PROVENANCE ...; Robert Vernon by 1847
<br/>ENGRAVING Line-engraving by P.C. Canot, pub. 25 February 1758, as a pair to ‘A View of Westminster Bridge...’ (after no.144, <i>q.v.</i>) ‘to be had at Mr. Scotts in Henrietta Street Covent Garden’
<br/>LITERATURE Vernon Heath, <i>Recollections</i>, 1892, p.348; Hilda F. Finberg, ‘Canaletto in England’, <i>Walpole Society</i>, IX, 1921, p.49; Kingzett 1982, pp.43–9, version J, p.48
<br/></p>
<p>The view is of Old London Bridge as it looked shortly before 1760, when the houses upon it were finally demolished. The bridge itself (London's only bridge until the opening of Westminster Bridge in 1750) was constructed about 1209; its twenty piers supported nineteen irregularly spaced arches. Building upon the bridge itself progressed erratically over the next 600 years, without any coherent planning and subject to recurring disasters, particularly fire. Reading from left to right, the buildings depicted on the bridge itself are a group of houses last rebuilt after the fire of 1725; the Great Stone Gateway (originally built in the thirteenth century, incorporating a drawbridge and portcullis and impregnable to human attack), also rebuilt after the fire of 1725; a group of houses with railed roof gardens, rebuilt in the seventeenth century; the drawbridge, once regularly raised to let tall-masted ships pass, already ‘ruynous’ by 1500, when Henry VII insisted on its being raised (apparently for the last time) for his royal barges, and permanently ‘fixed’ in 1722; Nonesuch House, an elaborately decorated building pre-fabricated in Holland, slotted into the site of the Old Drawbridge Gate in 1577 and by now in the last stages of decay; a group of seventeenth-century houses known as ‘The Middle’, also with railed roof gardens; the remains of the Chapel of St Thomas, partially demolished in the 1550s, converted into tenements and latterly the premises of the stationers Wright &amp; Gill; the Waterworks (with the Water Tower) which supplied the City of London; and, most recent of all, the block of elegant shops designed by George Dance the Elder, built about 1745 and known as ‘The Piazza’ from its inner, colonnaded street frontage. Rising behind the bridge are the church spires of St Michael, Crooked Lane and St Magnus the Martyr, with a view of the monument between the masts of the ship on the right (a key to this view, based on a <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/d/drawing" title="Glossary definition for 'Drawing'"><span>drawing</span></a> evidently derived from Canot's 1758 <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/e/engraving" title="Glossary definition for 'Engraving'"><span>engraving</span></a> after Scott, is given in Peter Jackson, <i>London Bridge</i>, 1971, pp.56–7).
<br/>
<br/><span>N00313</span>, painted as a <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/p/pendant" title="Glossary definition for 'Pendant'"><span>pendant</span></a> to no.144 (<i>q.v.</i>), is one of eleven versions of a <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/c/composition" title="Glossary definition for 'Composition'"><span>composition</span></a> whose popularity evidently owed much to general nostalgia for the bridge as it had appeared in former centuries. It is the Tate Gallery version which was used for Canot's engraving, published in 1758 (see above). Details of the other versions, and of the drawings in Scott's studio sale of 1773 on which the composition was probably based, are given in Kingzett 1982. The picture entitled ‘View of London Bridge as in the year 1757’ which Scott exhibited at the Society of Artists in 1761 (99) was, Kingzett suggests, probably the version now in a private collection, Canada (fig.55 is Kingzett's version C).</p>
<p>
<br/><b>Published in:</b>
<br/>Elizabeth Einberg and Judy Egerton, <i>The Age of Hogarth: British Painters Born 1675-1709</i>, Tate Gallery Collections, II, London 1988
<br/></p>

Catalogue entry
2004-09-22T00:00:00
catalogue-entry
CATALOGUE_ENTRY
adults architecture boat, barge boat, rowing bridge bridges and viaducts church England features group groups house London Bridge man monument Monument monuments people places public and municipal religious residential river River Thames ship, sailing shop society spire St Magnus King and Martyr’s Church townscapes / man-made features transport: water UK countries and regions UK London UK natural features waterfront water: inland