Lot Essay
This picture is similar in composition to the painting of the same title exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1888, no. 548, and now in the Tate Gallery, no. 1621, having been bought by the Chantrey Bequest for £600 in the same year. Although the pictures share the same viewpoint and a hansom cab is seen traversing each picture, our smaller picture lacks the flower girl in the foreground, and the mother and child are seen walking in front of the hansom rather than alongside it. Their dog is the artist's own, and can be seen in many of his paintings.
Logsdail painted much of the Tate picture from a horsedrawn wagon parked opposite Morley's Hotel and looking north across Trafalgar Square. He had originally intended a snow scene, and although the weather did not co-operate it was bitterly cold. He recalled: 'My van with its tarpaulin roof and open back and front made a sufficiently uncomfortable studio... With my frozen feet embedded in the straw I struggled there off and on through an inclement winter. The principal figures were of course done in the open air of the quadrangle of Primrose Hill Studios'. On account of the costumes of the figures, our picture would appear to have been painted in more comfortable conditions in the summer.
An oil study of the Hansom cab was sold at Sotheby's, 5 June 1991, lot 91.
Logsdail painted much of the Tate picture from a horsedrawn wagon parked opposite Morley's Hotel and looking north across Trafalgar Square. He had originally intended a snow scene, and although the weather did not co-operate it was bitterly cold. He recalled: 'My van with its tarpaulin roof and open back and front made a sufficiently uncomfortable studio... With my frozen feet embedded in the straw I struggled there off and on through an inclement winter. The principal figures were of course done in the open air of the quadrangle of Primrose Hill Studios'. On account of the costumes of the figures, our picture would appear to have been painted in more comfortable conditions in the summer.
An oil study of the Hansom cab was sold at Sotheby's, 5 June 1991, lot 91.