The Thames at Night

This granite obelisk, nearly 60-ft high and weighing around 186 tons was presented by the Turkish Viceroy of Egypt, Mohammed Ali to the British in 1819. Cut from the quarries of Aswan and erected at Heliopolis around 1475 BC, it was moved by the Romans to Alexandria where by the early nineteenth century it had toppled over in the sand. Its transport to England was thought impossible until the engineer John Dixon constructed an iron cylindrical pontoon in which the obelisk was towed out to sea in September 1877. During a gale in the Bay of Biscay, the Needle was almost lost, but it eventually reached London in January 1878. It was finally re-erected on Victoria Embankment between Hungerford and Waterloo Bridges, with a time capsule buried beneath which included newspapers, coins, Bibles, a copy of Bradshaw's Railway Guide and a dozen photographs of the most beautiful English women of the day.

A painter of towns, landscapes and genre subjects, he was apprenticed to an architect. He exhibited in London from 1871-1904, was a member of the R.W.S. for a short time and was elected A.R.I and R.I. in 1878 and 1879. A friend of the landscape watercolourist Thomas Collier (1840-1891).