Page 50 - A Time and A Place Catalogue, Jorge Welsh

FIG. 25
→ about Boulton Mainwaring, the architect who
designed the building.10 He probably supplied his
architectural plans to William Bellers (fl. 1733-1773), in an effort to balance the Whitechapel Mount
a landscape artist and engraver, and author of this
scene according to the inscription. In fact, Boulton
Mainwaring had been required to draw and engrave
a plan of the building, to be circulated among the
governors.11 In 1753, it is known that Bellers’ print
of the London Hospital was advertised at five
shillings, and the contributions were to be collected
by William Trotter and Benjamin Gifford, secretary
and steward of the London Hospital respectively,
as well as by Bellers himself.12 The trees shown
at the front of both the engraving and the punch
bowl seem to be a compositional addition and
102
reminiscent of the landscapes by Claude Lorrain Fig. 25
(1600-1682), and may have been placed there
Jean B. C. Chatelain
on the other side.13 (1710-1758) and William Henry
Toms (1700-1765) after William
The sales of this manipulated composition, Bellers (fl. 1749-1773),
whereby a building yet to be erected was inserted View of the London Hospital
into a real setting, was a form of fund raising in White Chapel Road.
for the hospital’s construction and promotion Etching with engraved
of its location. Likewise, the busy and frantic lettering
movement in the street in the foreground was London — 1753
probably a way of convincing the public that
the area, which was then considered isolated, © Yale Center for British
would be largely inhabited after the hospital Art, Paul Mellon Collection
had been built. →