The Oxford Arms, Warwick Lane, City of London, by George Price Boyce

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The Oxford Arms, Warwick Lane, City of London

George Price Boyce RWS (1826-1897)

Watercolour

c. 1868

Height: 15.5 in. Width: 13.5 in

Collection: Victorian & Albert Museum, accession no. P.32-1917

Bequeathed by Henry Louis Florence

Boyce's background in architectural draughtsmanship is very evident here, yet there is much more human interest and artistic effect in this depiction than there would be in an architectural drawing — not to mention a white cat sitting by the upstairs window facing the viewer, another cat, black this time, peering down into the courtyard, and a dog lying below, close to the stairway. [Commentary continues below.]

As Matthew Potter says, "the experience of working from nature had slowly liberated Boyce from his more restrictive and hide-bound training.... His detailed, almost forensic sketches of building parts, rendered during his pupilage, thus gave way to more 'artistic' but nevertheless accurate renderings of historic buildings, for example, in The Oxford Arms, Warwick Lane, City of London.

Link to Related Material

Photograph of the same building in 1875

Image © Victoria and Albert Museum, reproduced for permitted for non-commercial purposes. Image download and text by Jacqueline Banerjee. [Click on the image to enlarge it, and mouse over the text for links.

Bibliography

The Oxford Arms, Warwick Lane, City of London. Victoria and Albert Museum. Web. 13 July 2024.

Potter, Matthew C. "Art Training in Mid-Nineteenth-Century London and Paris." Victorian Artists and Their World, 1844-1861, as Reflected in the Papers of Joanna and George Boyce and Henry Wells. Edited by Katie Herrington. Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Boydell Press, 2024. 45-94. [Review]

Created 12 July 2024