For nearly 200 years, the pleasure gardens of Vauxhall offered Londoners every kind of entertainment, from sublime orchestral music to the spectacle of a horse and rider lifted into the sky by a hot-air balloon. There was dining, dancing, and strolling beneath lighted trees, fireworks and flirtations and masquerades. The leafy gardens offered a respite from the city's heat as well as scores of shadowy bowers for amorous assignations.
I've always been fascinated by Vauxhall, and I've set scenes in several of my books beneath the famous twinkling lights. When I recently came across this punch bowl (part of the current Uncorked! exhibition at Winthertur Museum), I felt like I'd found an old friend. Painted on one side of the bowl is a view of the gardens, reproducing a c 1751 print by John Bowles after Samuel Wale, right. (Click on the pictures to see the detail.)
I've collected many more images from Vauxhall – including tickets, broadsides, prints, and drawings – on a special board for our Pinterest page. (I did say I was fascinated by the pleasure gardens, didn't I?) And if you're fortunate enough to visit London this summer, be sure to visit this exhibition at the Foundling Museum.
Above: Punch bowl showing Vauxhall Gardens and London Foundling Hospital. Jingdezhen, China, c1800. Porcelain. Winterthur Museum.
Below: Vauxhall Gardens, shewing the Grand Walk, at the entrance of the Gardens and the Orchestra with the Musick Playing. Published by John Bowles after drawings by Samuel Wale, 1751. Museum of London.
One of us -- 
10 comments:
That's a surprise. I visited my local art gallery on Sunday for a screening of the documentary Sense and Sensation by John Brewer. It included a visit to what remains of Vauxhall garden in London, a rather non-descript grassy patch by a railway line. Then, as a treat, he visited a London Museum that held in its collection a scale model of the gardens recreated from illustrations. It was an instructive documentary, although I could not tell you what museum it was from my memory.
The sacale model was made for the 1984 Rococo exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum, and it still belongs to them, but, until 9 September 2012, it's included in the Vauxhall Gardens exhibition at the FOundling Museum in Brunswick Square in London, along with the Canaletto of Vauxhall.
Thank you both! Here's a direct link to the scale model of Vauxhall as shown on the V&A website: http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O1105857/model-model-of-vauxhall-gardens/
What a delightful model--thanks for the link, Susan! Love the punchbowl too--the exploding green of the trees and the red rococo frame suggest fireworks.
What a gorgeous piece of history. Really love the colours.
Thank you so much for the link to the model. I saw this years ago at the V&A and went back to look for it and it was gone! I look forward to visiting it in its new temporary home this summer.
Years ago my wife worked in a building next to the site of the Vauxhall Gardens, which is indeed now a nondescript patch of grass. She was involved in a plan to revive the gardens in contemporary form, but the scheme didn't get off the ground in spite of some good promises of corporate sponsorship. More recently someone set up a tethered hot-air balloon there, so people could go on balloon ascents again, but that too has now gone.
I love porcelain in its own right and I love the connection to Vauxhall Gardens even more. Thanks for the link
Hels
http://melbourneblogger.blogspot.com.au/2009/09/c18th-pleasure-gardens-fashions-food.html
You may enjoy taking a look at John Barrell's recent essay /review in the TLS of: David Coke and Alan Borg, Vauxhall Gardens A history. Yale University Press. £55 (US $95).
http://www.the-tls.co.uk/tls/public/article862433.ece
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