The Comforts of Bath, The Pump Room

This watercolour is related to pl.III of The Comforts of Bath aquatints though the model seems to have been a now lost version reproduced in F.J. Mathew, 'Some Drawings of Thomas Rowlandson', Print-Collector's Quarterley, II, December 1912, p.395; other versions are in the collection of Philip Pinsof, Highland Park, Illinois, and the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven (see Riely, op.cit., pp.35-6 under no.46).
Rowlandson shows the Pump Room, designed by Thomas Baldwin and John Palmer and built between 1791 and 1795. Visitors are shown taking the waters, for which Bath was famed.