The Royal Family at Covent Garden Theater, London, 1804

This is an original antique copper engraving, uncolored, lettered "The Royal Family at Covent Garden Theater." The view looks across the auditorium toward the stage. At the left the royal box, hung with swagged drapery and marked with the cipher "GR" and a crown, is crowded with figures, and tiers of boxes and galleries full of spectators line both sides of the house. On the stage, framed by an ornate proscenium arch with a lyre at its crown, soldiers and a dancing figure perform before scenery of mountains, palms and a waterfall, and the pit is packed in the foreground.

The title is engraved in script below the image. The artist's credit "E. Pugh Del." is at lower left and the engraver's credit "J. Fittler Sc." at lower right. Beneath the title is the imprint "Published Augt 11-1804, by Richard Phillips, 71, St Paul's Church Yard."

The plate comes from Modern London; Being the History and Present State of the British Metropolis, printed for Richard Phillips, No. 71, St. Paul's Church-Yard, by C. Mercier and Co., Northumberland-court, Strand, in 1804, and "illustrated with numerous copper plates." Many of its topographical views were drawn by Edward Pugh, a Welsh painter working in London, and engraved on copper by several London engravers, each of whom signed his own plate. The Covent Garden theater shown here was destroyed by fire in 1808, which makes views of its interior a record of a lost building.

A good companion to the view of Drury Lane from the same book.

This is an original antique print, not a modern reproduction. This item is sold unframed.