Lot 121: FILIPPO BARATTI ITALIAN, 19TH CENTURY WATERLOO PLACE

signed F. Baratti and dated 1886 (lower right)

oil on canvas

PROVENANCE

Corporate Collection, United Kingdom
CATALOGUE NOTE

The present painting, Waterloo Place, together with St. Paul's Cathedral from Aldgate, Fleet Street, looking East, is dated 1886. These two paintings appear to be the last works recorded by Filippo Baratti during his stay in London. The architect John Nash's magisterial scheme to provide a grand thoroughfare connecting Marylebone Park (now Regent's Park) to the Prince Regent's palatial London home at Carlton House, was the capital's largest civic project since the rebuilding of the city after the great fire of 1666. A monumental undertaking of immense cost, work began in 1813 but gathered pace in 1815 when the Battle of Waterloo finally ended a generation of war against Revolutionary France. The Duke of Wellington's decisive defeat of Napolean's army outside Brussels was hailed throughout Europe as the greatest victory in military history, yet, in London, only two tangible reminders of Wellington's triumph commemorated its name; one was Waterloo Bridge, opened on the second anniversary of the battle on June 19, 1817, and the other was Waterloo Place, begun the previous year to mark the final phase of Nash's plans by linking Regent Street to the gates of Carlton House.

Nash conceived Waterloo Place as far more than a mere street, however, it was designed as much to frame a suitably impressive vista down Lower Regent Street, as to provide a means of access. Almost completed in 1820, in 1821 it was even suggested that 'Cleopatra's Needle' - presented to Britain by the Turkish Viceroy of Egypt in 1819- be sited in Waterloo Place as its central feature. The idea floundered when the obelisk itself proved impossible to move from the ancient landscape outside Alexandria. At about the same time, the Prince Regent had succeeded to the throne as King George IV and taken up residence in Buckingham Palace, leaving Carlton House empty and stripped of its treasures.

Despite the money lavished upon it during the Regency, the house itself was demolished in 1826 and Carlton House Terrace, in fact consisting of two splendid terraces, was erected on the site between 1827 and 1832. This resulted in the unexpected extension of Waterloo Place so as to link it with the Carlton House terraces and The Mall beyond. The Athenaeum and the United Services Club, both recently established, then acquired the flanking sites on Pall Mall while the construction of Carlton House Terrace was in progess. In 1833, when the Duke of York's column was erected above the steps at the southern end, the development of Waterloo Place was finally completed. The Crown Commissioners, owners of the entire area, had begun by insisting that the Pall Mall facades of the two Clubs should be identical, but after a lengthy wrangle between the various parties, including Nash himself as architect to the United Services Club, the buildings, when erected, boasted only similar elevation. Broadly speaking however, Nash's dream of an architecturally harmonious route across the heart of the capital had been achieved and the scheme in its entirety was to remain essentially unchanged until the beginning of the twentieth century.

Baratti, though mainly known for his Orientalist compositions, captures the energy of this impressive square. When the artist set up his easel in 1886, he saw Waterloo Place much as John Nash had left it fifty or so years before. From Baratti's vantage point on the south side of Pall Mall, the modest cupola of the National Gallery to the east rises above Trafalgar Square, although the spire of St. Martin-in-the-Field's Church intrudes with an impudent touch of artistic license when, in truth, it would be just out of sight. North of Pall Mall, the solid block of dwellings and commercial premises on the eastern side of Waterloo Place appears just as Nash had completed it and, in fact, the only element which John Nash would not have recognized instantly is the Guard's Memorial, or Crimean Monument, erected to the memory of the 2,162 officers and men of the Guard's Division who were slain in the Russian War of 1854-6. Designed by John Bell, this imposing granite pedestal, topped by a figure of Victory and fronted by three guardsmen, was unveiled in 1859.

Despite the grandeur of the architecture, Baratti's real achievement here is to have captured the prosperous bustle of late Victorian London at a time when the city was the richest in the world. Pall Mall, teeming with cabs and carriages, and the Circus filled with people from every stratum of society, was simply a microcosm of a nation, charmingly recorded for posterity by Baratti.

38 by 49 3/4 in.<br><br>96.5 by 126 cm