Cries of London - Hot Spice Gingerbread - Francis Wheatley - Framed Print - 20"H x 16"W

Cries of London - Hot Spice Gingerbread - Francis Wheatley - Framed Print - 20"H x 16"W

Francis Wheatley RA was an English portrait and landscape painter.

Wheatley studied at William Shipley's drawing school and the Royal Academy, and won several prizes from the Society of Arts. He assisted in the decoration of Vauxhall, and aided John Hamilton Mortimer in painting a ceiling for Lord Melbourne at Brocket Hall.

He fell in with extravagant company and was forced to flee his creditors, so he eloped to Ireland with Elizabeth Gresse, wife of a fellow artist John Alexander Gresse

In Dublin, he established himself there as a portrait-painter, executing, among other works, the best-known interior of the Irish House of Commons. He also painted the review of the Dublin regiments of the Irish Volunteers in College Green in November 1779, the basis for a best-selling print bought by numerous Irish Patriot supporters. He was careful to include the grandees of Dublin and also exotic visitors such as Princess Dashkov.

It is, however, as a painter, in both oil and water-color, of landscapes and rustic subjects that Wheatley is best remembered.

Cries of London Francis Wheatley R.A. Four Prints from Yardley of London Limited, serially produced from the famous set of fourteen engravings comprising the Cries of London by Francis Wheatley, RT.A. The Lavender Group, adapted in 1913 from the original Promrose sellers became the Yardley trade mark for all Lavender products and was successfully used in an advertising campaign for many years

The first association with the name of Yardley and the manufacture of soap is to be found in the reign of Charles I, when a young man named Yardley paid the King a large sum of money in return for a cencession to manufacture soap for the whole of London. Lavender was used to perfume his soap, a fragrance for which the House of Yardley is famous to this day.