A Bird's-eye View of Covent Garden Market

Pieced together from four sheets of a sketchbook, this study looks west over London's Covent Garden Market to St. Paul's Church. The church and adjoining piazza were built after designs by Inigo Jones in the 1630s. The square was once a fashionable place of residence, but was eventually taken over by the fruit and vegetable market that remains there to this day. Rowlandson could not resist inserting an amusing note into this straightforward view: toddling into Carpenter's Coffee House in the middle of the day is a party of drunken revellers.