London Bridge on the Night of the Marriage of the Prince and Princess of Wales

The crush on London Bridge on a celebration night in 1863 — a Pre-Raphaelite crowd scene on a bridge since replaced.

The real place in the painting

London Bridge (Rennie's bridge of 1831)

The painting shows a real, identified place that you can find today. The exact spot the artist worked from is not necessarily known.

London Bridge on the Night of the Marriage of the Prince and Princess of Wales — at a glance

Artist

William Holman Hunt (1827–1910)

Year

1863–1866

Movement

Pre-Raphaelite

Place

Old London Bridge, over the Thames, London

Viewpoint

Rennie's 1831 London Bridge — dismantled 1967–72 (re-erected in Arizona); the crossing and river remain

Medium

Oil on canvas

Dimensions

c. 66 × 98 cm

Now at

Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Overview

This crowded night scene by the Pre-Raphaelite William Holman Hunt records a real event: the evening of 10 March 1863, when London celebrated the marriage of the Prince of Wales (the future Edward VII) to Princess Alexandra of Denmark, and huge crowds jammed the streets and bridges. Hunt shows the press of people on London Bridge by gaslight and torchlight — top hats, bonnets, soldiers, a boy up a lamppost, faces lit from below — with decorated buildings and the river beyond. It is oil on canvas, about 66 by 98 cm, and it hangs in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.

Where was London Bridge on the Night of the Marriage of the Prince and Princess of Wales painted?

Scholarship The bridge is the granite London Bridge designed by John Rennie, opened in 1831, which carried the road across the Thames between the City and Southwark. That bridge was dismantled in 1967–72 (and famously re-erected at Lake Havasu City, Arizona) and replaced by the present concrete bridge on the same alignment. So the exact structure Hunt painted is gone from London, but the crossing and the river are unchanged and the general location is fixed.

Real placeLondon Bridge (Rennie's bridge of 1831)

ViewpointThe real place in the painting

Coordinates51.50790, -0.08850

Original now atAshmolean Museum, on public display

How we know

Depicts the crowd on Rennie's London Bridge on the night of the 1863 royal wedding; the stored coordinate points at that bridge's stones after their 1968 re-erection in Lake Havasu City, Arizona. Repointed to where the bridge stood on the Thames. Not an exact standpoint.

The real place in the painting Current museum

What is in the painting?

The picture is almost filled with a dense, jostling crowd seen close-to on the bridge: a woman pressed against the parapet, a policeman, a Highlander soldier, a flower-seller, a boy clinging to a lamp standard for a view, a dandy, children — dozens of individualised faces lit sharply by gas lamps and hand-held lights against the dark. Decorated shopfronts and flags show behind; the river and lit far bank beyond.

Look closely

The boy up the lamppost

A boy clings to a lamp standard to see over the crowd.

The lit faces

Dozens of individualised faces — a Highlander soldier, a policeman, a flower-seller, a dandy — modelled by gaslight from below.

The decorated shopfronts

Flags and illuminated buildings show behind the crowd for the royal celebration.

Analysis

Composition and technique

A wall of individualised faces filling the canvas, lit from below by gaslight, with the bridge and river as a dark backdrop.

Scholarship Hunt crops in on the crowd so it fills the frame edge to edge, each face and costume rendered with Pre-Raphaelite exactness, and uses the artificial light — lamps, torches — to model the mass dramatically out of the night. It is a portrait of a Victorian crowd as much as of an event.

London Bridge on the Night of the Marriage of the Prince and Princess of Wales

London Bridge (Rennie's bridge of 1831)