(Recto) View of the Crystal Palace as built in Hyde Park for the Great Exhibtion, July 1851; (Verso) landscape, ship and tree studies RMG PZ0856-002

(Recto) View of the Crystal Palace as built in Hyde Park for the Great Exhibtion, July 1851; (Verso) landscape, ship and tree studies
No. 8 of 36 (PAI0849 - PAI0884).
Mends perhaps drew this view across the Serpentine to Joseph Paxton's Crystal Palace just before his ship, the 'Trafalgar' sailed for the Mediterranean in July 1851. While it is not exceptional, and probably rather underpopulated, his drawing catches the liquid reflections off the water and the way this pioneering prefabricated glass building, of enormous scale, fitted into the Park.
(Verso) A page of pencil studies, some overlapping. They comprise two landscapes, each with a distant mountain prospect and a tree in the right foreground, one including (in the middle ground) a church with a spire and the other a house: two bow-view hull studies (but with masts indicated) of naval ships at anchor, one a three-decker and the other a two-decker, probably drawn off Sheerness; and two studies of upright but drooping tree branches, one over a fainter plant drawing.

Landscape, ship and tree studies