Credit: ©The Royal Society
    Image number: RS.19715

    A scene in Covent Garden

    Date
    1736
    Creator
    Isaac Basire (1704 - 1768, British) , Engraver
    Object type
    Archive reference number
    Material
    Technique
    Dimensions
    height (print): 145mm
    width (print): 90mm
    Subject
    Description
    View in Covent Garden, with a woman handing a letter, or note, to the first of two gentlemen; the second man, behind, averting his eyes and gesturing with one open hand. There is a small dog by the woman’s feet; behind, the Covent Garden sundial.

    Plate from a grangerized copy of A history of the Royal Society, with memoirs of the Presidents…by Charles Richard Weld (London, John W. Parker, 1848). In this edition, the original two volumes were extended to eight volumes with the addition of extra-illustrations and documents, by Alexander Meyrick Broadley.

    The engraving appears at p.20, as Weld’s text relates how an attempt was made to establish a scientific institution in the reign of Charles I, known as ‘’Minerva’s Museum’, with a licence declaring that ‘the College shall be erected at Covent Garden, in the parish of St.Martin’s-in-the-Fields’. The print was originally a frontispiece to The lying lover: or the ladies friendship, by Richard Steele (London, Henry Lintot, 1736).

    Inscribed below: ‘I. Basire Sculp.’
    Related fellows
    Charles Richard Weld (1813 - 1869, British) , Author
    Associated place
    <The World>
       > Europe
          > United Kingdom
             > London
    Powered by CollectionsIndex+/CollectionsOnline