With A Ladder and Some Glasses … You Could See the Hackney Marshes … If it wasn’t for the houses in between’ is a line from an old music hall song from the 1890s. The song has always conjured up ordinary London back gardens with the walled side returns of the standard Victorian terraced house that were built so widely in every UK city and town. The place to store the dustbins and coal, that accommodated the wash house and the lavatory, or the meeting place for a cup of tea in multi occupied households.
This little oil is in praise of side returns – vaguely based on my own London back garden at some uncertain time in the twentieth century – although it could be almost any town garden, anywhere…
With a Ladder & Some Glasses You Could See the Hackney Marshes
44 x 34cm, oil on board
SOLD
Instagram: @janeyoungillustration