View of Bath from Spring Gardens

Thomas Hearne chose to depict sites with an eye to their marketability. Bath, the most fashionable provincial city in eighteenth-century Britain, was an obvious choice. This grand exhibition watercolor was shown at the Royal Academy in 1792 and engraved in the same year with the title South East View of the City of Bath. The scene shows Bath’s stylish residents shuttling to and fro across the river Avon between the city’s South Parade and the Spring Garden pleasure grounds. Although made with black and white engraving in mind, Hearne has evoked the warm limestone used in all Bath’s buildings through rose-tinted coloring and matching autumnal foliage.

Gallery label for Great British Watercolors from the Paul Mellon Collection at the Yale Center for British Art (Yale Center for British Art, 2008-06-09 - 2008-08-17)

Credit Line: Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection