Tuesday is Lord Mayor’s Day so this week’s picture is David Roberts’ view of St Paul’s from Blackfriars, painted in 1862. The work shows the Lord Mayor’s procession passing over Blackfriar’s Bridge, beneath the dome of St Paul’s, which rises into an unusually clement November sky. The painter has chosen a low viewpoint, which enables him to show the river traffic that once formed part of the celebrations. The throng of working boats on the Thames is swelled by festive barges festooned with flags, their reflections glittering in the sunlit water.


The picture was originally one of seven paintings in which Roberts set out to depict London’s principal architectural monuments from the Thames. All were bought by his patron, Charles Lucas, a wealthy London contractor whose company was responsible for the construction of, among other things, the Albert Hall and the Metropolitan and District Underground Lines. Lucas had a special room built for the display of Roberts’s “London series” in his mansion in Battersea Rise, on the south side of Clapham Common. The picture reproduced here is the only one painted in portrait rather than landscape format, which suggests that it was probably designed to hang over a mantelpiece on a chimney breast. The series was dispersed after Charles Lucas’s death but three pictures from it, including this one, remained in the possession of his descendants. They were eventually given to the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths, a livery company with which the family had long been closely associated, where they still hang today. Another picture from the series, an impressive panorama showing The Houses of Parliament from Millbank, can be seen at the Museum of London.



Roberts decided to paint his “London series” in 1860, when he was in his early sixties and was widely regarded as the...

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