Asylum For the Indigent Blind, Westminster Road

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Asylum For the Indigent Blind, Westminster Road

Thomas Hosmer Shepherd (1793-1864)

Price

£2,750

Signed

Signed

Medium

Monochrome watercolour with pencil

Dimensions

3 ½ x 6 inches

Illustrated

[James Elmes], Metropolitan Improvements or London in the Nineteenth Century, London: Jones & Co, 1828, facing page149;
[James Elmes], London and Its Environs in the Nineteenth Century…Illustrated ... by Thomas H Shepherd, London: Jones & Co, 1828-31, (Engraved by James Tingle)

Exhibited

'Bliss Was It in That Dawn To Be Alive, 1750-1850',
Chris Beetles Gallery, London, October 2008, no 257

Originally published as an engraving by Jones & Co on 28 March 1829 (engraved by Robert Acon)

'A building more commendable for utility than for its beauty, and apparently designed for its patients; any of whom would be supremely blessed, could they but see its glaring disproportions. The centre is composed of a ground story of three openings, covered with semi-elliptical arches, raised upon their narrow diameter, and on which is raised a principal story of three windows, with a façade of four ill-proportioned squat pilasters with Ionic columnar capitals ...
In this praiseworthy and well conducted establishment, which it is quite a treat to visit, about sixty indigent persons, male and female, are supported and taught the arts of manufacturing baskets, mats, clothes' lines, sash cords, hearth rugs, &c., from which a produce of from eight hundred to a thousand pounds a year is generally produced. This institution was originally established in 1792, and the present erected in 1807, and enlarged in 1819, so as to accommodate two hundred children.'
[James Elmes], Metropolitan Improvements or London in the Nineteenth Century, pages 149-50