The New Houses of Parliament

Location

Country: UK
City: London
Place: Government Art Collection

This view of the newly built Houses of Parliament was published before the construction of the building was absolutely finished, in around 1870, but at around the time work on the Commons Chamber was completed in 1852. In the foreground, the River Thames is busy with activity, as small rowing boats and ships powered by steam or sail travel up and down the river.

Edmund Walker began as a miniature painter on ivory, abandoning the practice as photography grew in popularity. He then turned to architectural draughtsmanship, making sketches of country seats and selling them to the owners. His views of the Thames Embankment (completed 1870) were exhibited at the Royal Academy, as were many of his architectural drawings. Sometime before 1851 he began working for the publishers Day & Son. He made watercolour views and lithographs of the interiors of the Great Exhibition and lithographed William Simpson’s sketches of the Crimean War and the Indian Mutiny for the firm. He reportedly ‘never fully recovered’ from the effect of the failing fortunes of Day & Son, late in his career. Walker died in 1882, aged 68.
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, Palace of Westminster, Westminster

Subjects

rowing boat, Gothic Revival, river, bridge (urban), government building, abbey, clock tower, tower, barge/canal boat, paddle steamer, sailboat

Materials & Techniques

lithograph, colour lithograph

Artist

Edmund Walker (1813/14 - 1882)
Thomas Picken (1815 - 1870)

Title

The New Houses of Parliament

Date

published 1 May 1852

Medium

Colour lithograph

Dimensions

height: 38.00 cm, width: 53.20 cm

Acquisition

Purchased from Frank T Sabin, October 1959

GAC number

5020