Night Scene with Hotel in the Rain

Location

Country: Belgium
City: Brussels
Place: British Embassy, UK representation to the EU & UK delegation to NATO

Brightly lit trams glide through a street, the light from their windows reflecting on the wet tarmac. Beyond them are glowing streetlights and a large hotel building.

The street depicted may be London’s Park Lane. Although the first horse-drawn tram in London began operating in 1860, the first tram lines authorised by an Act of Parliament began operating ten years later. One of these lines connected Kensington to Oxford Street via Park Lane. The horse-drawn tram was gradually replaced by the electric tram. In 1901, the Croydon Corporation introduced the first fully operational electric tram services in the Greater London area, using power delivered from overhead wires. After a slow start, electric trams became popular and, by 1903, there were 300 electric tramcars in London.

Landscape painter and illustrator William Hyde was born in 1859 and studied at the Slade School of Art, where he specialised in the printmaking techniques of etching, engraving and mezzotint. He lived in Holborn from 1889, the year he began to show his work at the Royal Academy. By 1905, following his marriage to Kate Rogers, Hyde had moved to Guildford in Surrey. Suffering from depression, Hyde burnt a large proportion of his oil painting and watercolours, with few surviving today. He is best remembered as an illustrator, with works in a wide range of publications, from magazines to major works of literature, including editions of John Milton and Percy Shelley.

Places

Subjects

tram, car, townscape/cityscape, night, rain, road, lamp post, hotel

Materials & Techniques

paper (as artists material), watercolour (as artists materials), watercolour (as object name)

Artist

William Hyde (1858 - 1925)

Title

Night Scene with Hotel in the Rain

Date

1910

Medium

Watercolour on paper

Dimensions

height: .00 cm, width: .00 cm

Acquisition

Origin uncertain

Inscription

bl: W Hyde / 1910

GAC number

17547