JAMES POLLARD (BRITISH 1792-1867), HATCHETTS

JAMES POLLARD (BRITISH 1792-1867) HATCHETTS, THE WHITE HORSE CELLAR, PICADILLY Oil on canvas 45 x 65cm (17½ x 25½in.) Provenance: Sale, Sotheby's London,18th November 1966, lot 13 (£10,000) C. Marshall Esq. The Mr and Mrs Jack R. Dick Their Sale, Sotheby's London, 28th April 1976, lot 183 (£10,000) Sale, Sotheby's, London, British Paintings 1500-1850, 9 April 1997, lot 141 Literature: N. C. Selway, The Golden Age of Coaching and Sport as Depicted by James Pollard, Leigh-on-Sea, 1972, p.30, no.102, illus. In Eighteenth-century London, Hatchett's was a well established hotel and coffee house, and continued to serve as both long after coaching days were over. It was one of several inns and shops on the unfashionable south side of Piccadilly, which was given over to trade and commerce unlike the north side, which had become the most desirable location for many of London's finest noblemen's palaces. Hatchett's later occupied the site of a famous inn called The White Horse Cellars, which in its heyday was the starting point for all London's mail coaches bound for the distant West Country. In 1925 Hatchett's itself privately published 'Old Coaching Days and the White Horse Cellar', being an illustrated souvenir in the form of a short history of this historic London establishment, which first opened in 1720 and was now owned by Hatchett's Restaurant, the Twentieth-century survivor of the popular Georgian coffee house. Condition Report: The canvas has been relined. UV light reveals a few retouches, such as on the coach to the lower left corner, and on the darker tones of the two coaches in the foreground to the right, as well as slight restoration between the two figures exchanging money to the left - such aforementioned retouches have done been done professionally and blend in with the original paint. Secondly there is a slight more amateur restoration in the infilling of the cracks on the lower corer of the building as well as on the white curtains. Condition Report Disclaimer