Supporting museums Art we've helped buy The General Post Office, One Minute to Six
The General Post Office, One Minute to Six The General Post Office, One Minute to Six

© Museum of London


The General Post Office, One Minute to Six

George Elgar Hicks

Art Funded
1991
Dimensions
89 x 135 cm
Vendor
Richard Green
The painting tacitly celebrates the optimism of the middle classes and their conviction that the development of communications could only go on getting better and better.

Six o'clock was the closing time for the departure of newspapers by the night's mail.

Provenance

Commissioned by Wallis, but exchanged to Votkins; H.G.McCrea; M.Bernard Ltd by 1948; E.Waugh; Sotheby's, 1971; British Rail Pension Fund; Sotheby's 1990.

Oil on canvas

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John Ritchie's A Summer Day in Hyde Park evokes the Victorians at their leisure on the banks of the Serpentine, providing a wealth of costume detail and several charming vignettes along the way.

The little clay figure of Thomas Todd by the Chinese model maker Chitqua is an intimate portrait of a successful merchant – one of the many who helped create London into a thriving mercantile centre in the 18th century.

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