Entrance to Hyde Park, Victorian London, Antique Engraving, circa 1880

About this sheet

This original engraving, lettered "Entrance to Hyde Park", shows Hyde Park Corner in London with Decimus Burton's columned screen and the Wellington Arch crowned by the colossal equestrian statue of the Duke of Wellington. The plate is lettered at the lower left "Cassell's Old & New London, Plate 40."

The screen of Ionic columns runs across the middle of the view with its three arched gateways, and the great arch rises at the right, the bronze duke pointing out over the traffic. Open carriages, a coach drawn by four horses and riders on horseback pass along the road, while fashionably dressed ladies with parasols and gentlemen in top hats stand by the railings in the right foreground. Houses close the view at either side, and the trees of the park show behind the screen.

Burton designed both the screen and the arch in the 1820s as a grand approach to London from the west. In 1846 the arch was crowned with Matthew Cotes Wyatt's statue of Wellington, so large that it was mocked from the start. In 1883 the arch was moved and the statue taken down and sent to Aldershot, so this view records the corner as it looked before that change.

Old and New London, begun by Walter Thornbury and completed by Edward Walford, was published by Cassell in the 1870s and reissued in several editions; the separate numbered plates were issued with it. This one is an uncolored engraving with fine detail in the architecture and the lively traffic of horses and carriages.

It will interest collectors of Victorian London, of Wellington and of the London parks, and it would look well framed in a hallway, a study or a dining room, perhaps with other views of Hyde Park and the West End.

This is an original antique print, not a modern reproduction. This item is sold unframed. Any framed or interior images are shown for presentation and inspiration only, unless the listing explicitly states that the item is sold framed.