John Nixon, signed and dated 1804
Pencil and watercolour wash, Courtesy Bonhams Auctioneers
In 1757 Robert Lloyd satirised the taste of the ‘wealthy Cit’ [Citizen], who ‘grown old in trade, Now wishes for the rural shade’. The grounds of such a merchant’s suburban villa were laid out with ‘Genius, Fancy, judgment, Goût, Whim, Caprice, Je-ne-scai-quoi, Virtù’. Here the ‘trav’ler with amazement’ would gaze upon tawdry Chinese and Gothic temples, ‘level lawns’, ‘skulking, sly ha-ha[s]’, and leaden effigies of ‘squabby Cupids…and the clumsy Graces’.