The Horse Guards

Location

Country: UK
City: London
Place: Government Art Collection

George Sidney Shepherd was born in Finsbury, London; the son of a watchmaker. He is thought to have attended Dr Cox Macro’s sketching academy and he exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1800. In 1807 he made studies for Britton’s ‘Architectural Antiquities of Great Britain’ and also illustrated Booth’s ‘Architectural Series of London Churches’ (1818) and Wilkinson’s ‘Londina Illustrata’ (1824–34). With brother, Thomas Hosmer, he made views for Ackermann’s ‘Repository of the Arts’ in 1813. From 1832 he exhibited at the Society of British Artists. He was later a founder member of the New Society of Painters in Watercolour. By the 1840s his style had become more impressionistic. He was twice widowed by the time of his death in 1861.
Landscape lithographer and painter Thomas Picken was the younger brother of draughtsman and lithographer Andrew (1815-1845). The brothers were two of four sons of novelist Andrew Picken (1788-1833) and his wife Janet Coxon (1792-1871). Thomas made lithographs for David Roberts's ‘The Holy Land’ (1842-49), William Payne's ‘The Lake Scenery of England’ (1859), John Parker Lawson's ‘Scotland Delineated’ (1847-54) and other works. He exhibited one painting at the Royal Academy in 1857 and ten at the Society of Artists, Suffolk Street (1846-75). Although generally thought to have emigrated to Australia in 1870, a 2004 entry in the ‘Oxford Dictionary of National Biography’ reports that he was an inmate of the Charterhouse, London, from 1879.

Places

England, London, Whitehall

Subjects

horseback, topography, townscape/cityscape, horse, boy, man, woman, girl, parade, Household Cavalry, soldier, government building, dome

Materials & Techniques

lithograph, colour lithograph

Artist

George Sidney Shepherd (1784 - 1862)
Thomas Picken (1815 - 1870)

Title

The Horse Guards

Date

Medium

Colour lithograph

Acquisition

Purchased from Parker Gallery, March 1975

GAC number

11829