Covent Garden Theatre, London

Medium: aquatint

Artist: A. Pugin

Engraver: Thomas Rowlandson

Dated: 1808

Image Dimensions: 10½" x 9" (26.67cm x 22.86cm)

Price: £250.00

This image is a hand-colored aquatint titled “Covent Garden Theatre” (Plate 27) from the exact same plate book, The Microcosm of London, published on July 1, 1808, by Rudolph Ackermann.

The Collaboration

This print features the same master artistic partnership to depict London’s social and architectural landscape:

- Augustus Charles Pugin: Meticulously executed the architectural design, detailing the massive squared proscenium arch, the flat painted ceiling panels, and the sweeping curves of the multi-tiered boxes.
- Thomas Rowlandson: Superimposed the packed, energetic audience. He filled the lower orchestra pit and side galleries with heavily caricatured, expressive theatergoers rubbing shoulders across different social classes.
- John Bluck: Provided the precision aquatint engraving to create the rich, tonal atmospheric shading across the vast indoor space.

Historical Significance

Like the Drury Lane plate, this print documents a major landmark just before its destruction. It shows the first incarnation of the Covent Garden Theatre (the site of today’s Royal Opera House). Merely two months after this print was published, on September 20, 1808, a catastrophic fire burned the entire theater to the ground.

The fire famously destroyed an irreplaceable musical treasure visible right in the center of the stage in this print: the historic pipe organ that George Frideric Handel had used and bequeathed to the theater, along with many of his original musical manuscripts.