London: A Pilgrimage

Artisan: Ken Blythe
Date: Unknown
Dimensions: 39 x 30 x / 1 ½ x 1 ⅛ x ¼ inches (height x width x depth)
Intended Room: Library
Inventory number: 2022.215
Category: Books

Provenance: Purchased from the artist’s daughter and son-in-law, who run The Little Book Company, via eBay, in July 2022.

This is a miniature copy of a remarkable work by the French printmaker Gustave Dore, published in 1872. It was not, as early readers might have expected, a catalogue of London’s great sights but instead a ruthlessly honest record of what life was like in the world’s largest city.

There are scenes of high-society life (see ‘A Ball at the Mansion House’: one of the images reproduced below), but Dore’s heart lay with those of the lower classes, struggling to survive in a city that threatened to swallow them whole. He recorded the costumes of street sellers, the crush of the everyday commute (see ‘A City Thoroughfare’) and the alleys, nooks and crannies.

It’s a work full of compassion for the lower orders – fitting for a man whose most famous image is the tiny Cosette, from his illustrations to Les Miserables, whose face has now become the icon of the long-running stage show. I’d like to think the fact that the Quartermaines have it in their library shows that they do have a social conscience, despite their own glittering lifestyle.