View of the London and Croydon Railway.

Method Lithograph with tint stone and hand colouring
Artist Day & Hague after Edward Duncan
Published Published at 105 Leadenhall Street 1st June 1838.
Dimensions Image 280 x 489 mm, Sheet 435 x 600 mm
Notes Inscription below title reads: "From the deep cutting made through the hill at New Cross looking towards Greenwich Railway." and above title "J. Gibbs. Engineer".

An expansive panorama of 19th century London viewed from the newly built London and Croydon railway line at New Cross and opened in 1839. Published in 1838 Edward Duncan would have had to employ his imagination to depict this scene as a working line. The foreground features the railway line into central London with an steam train approaching a bridge at the end of the cutting, a collection of onlookers watch from the top of the slope to the right. London spreads out in the middle distance with the dome of St. Paul's to the left and the Tower of London visible beyond the remarkable arches of the Greenwich Railway. The skyline is dotted with the spires of the city's churches and the smoking chimneys of factories out to the east.

Day & Haghe were one of the most prominent lithographic companies of the nineteenth-century. They were also amongst the foremost pioneers in the evolution of chromolithography. The firm was established in 1823 by William Day, but did not trade under the moniker of Day & Haghe until the arrival of Louis Haghe in 1831. In 1838, Day & Haghe were appointed as Lithographers to the Queen. However, and perhaps owing to the fact that there was never a formal partnership between the two, Haghe left the firm in the 1850's to devote himself to watercolour painting. The firm continued as Day & Son under the guidance of William Day the younger (1823-1906) but, as a result of a scandal involving Lajos Kossuth, was forced into liquidation in 1867. Vincent Brookes bought the company in the same year, and would produce the caricatures for Gibson Bowles' Vanity Fair magazine, as well as the illustrations for Cassells's Poultry Book, amongst other commissions.

Edward Duncan (1803 - 1882) was a printmaker and landscape watercolourist. Duncan began his career as an engraver of sporting subjects but later abandoned this and became solely a painter and printer of marine pictures. He exhibited at the Royal Academy; the British Institution and the Society of British Artists. He was also a member of the Royal Watercolour Society.

Condition: Toning and occasional spotting to sheet, predominantly to margins. Short tear to bottom margin, not affecting printed area.
Framing mounted
Price £500.00
Stock ID 6648

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