Old Smithfield Market, a rare original watercolour, provides an exceptional view of London’s historic Smithfield Market, which had hosted livestock trading as early as the 12th century, and will finally cease operations in 2028. The site has had various iterations across its long history. By Acts of Edward III in 1327 and 1361 the trade in cattle and sheep had been confined to the ‘smooth fields’ just outside the old City walls, survived the Great Fire of 1666 and by the mid-19th century, saw 220,000 cattle and 1.5 million sheep annually being driven through London’s narrow and crowded thoroughfares, at the limit of what the City could tolerate. Charles Dickens evoked the scene in Oliver Twist (1838): ‘It was market morning, the ground was covered, nearly ankle-deep, with filth and mire … the bleating of sheep, the grunting and squeaking of pigs … the shouts, oaths and quarrelling on all sides … rendered it a stunning and bewildering scene’. In 1851, the Smithfield Market Removal Act was issued and the location of the live trade was transferred to Copenhagen Fields in Islington in 1855. In its place in 1868 was erected the Victorian meat market that stands today, with its vaulted ceiling and intricate, painted ironwork. The present watercolour provides a view of the market on a typical trading morning circa 1810 - a record of a London institution near the end of its medieval life but not yet under reform.

From an elevated viewpoint looking south, one is given a bustling view of the square. Prominent in the foreground is a horseman in a russet riding coat and around him, people go about their business: a lad with a flock of sheep; a gentleman farmer in a sharp orange waistcoat; women and a man in flirtatious conversation to the far left and, to the right, a drover in a smock-frock sits on the upper rail of a cattle pen. Almost every figure carries a stick or a whip and each is, in Rowlandson’s habitual mode, separately occupied within the larger pattern. This is a busy, complex subject, illustrating the trade, activity, deals, and overall interactions between sellers and buyers in their daily trade - a scene scarcely imaginable today.

Beyond the foreground, the eye is led down two long avenues of penned livestock - cattle, sheep and pigs - with horse-drawn carts passing through and figures extending into the far distance. Framing the square are the four- and five-storey Georgian houses, while behind can be seen the distinctive dome of St Paul’s Cathedral.

Another related example to the present work, which adopts a similar viewpoint, is A Bird’s Eye View of Smithfield Market, Taken from the Bear & Ragged Staff (1811, aquatint, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York). This was commissioned by the print-seller Rudloph Ackermann for his publication Microcosm of London (1808–1811), a luxurious, three volume edition of prints offering a detailed recording of the city. He employed the architect Augustus Charles Pugin (1769-1832) to provide London’s topographical accuracy and, observing that in previous attempts, ‘the figures have generally been neglected, or are of a very inferior cast’, employed Rowlandson to provide the bright, rumbustious characters who made the city what it was.

The present work is characteristic of Rowlandson’s lively modelling of figures and clearly demonstrates why Ackermann chose him to collaborate on his Microcosm of London publication. Tonally, Rowlandson uses a scheme of warm buffs, ochres and Indian reds across the brickwork and the cattle, set against a pearl-grey sky, with single sharp notes of colour in some of the foreground figures. It is a rich example of Rowlandson’s significant contribution to the imagery of Regency London; a panoramic record of one of the principal public spaces of the City in the early nineteenth-century, and the more poignant still as Smithfield Market approaches its final chapter.