Street Cries: Depictions of London's Poor

A display of paintings, drawings and prints from the collection, focusing on street vendors and street life between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. Gustave Doré, Théodore Géricault, Thomas Rowlandson and Paul Sandby are among the major artists whose work tackles the subject of the urban poor during the period. Subjects include travelling carpenters and cane-weavers, prostitutes and criminals. Questions raised include how society was organised, the motives of those making, selling and buying the work, and the status and identity of the people portrayed.