Maggs Bros.

OCLC records examples at Yale and Brown. We have located other examples in the British Museum and at the Royal Museum Greenwich. Princeton have an example of the smaller version [see below].

A striking scene in Covent Garden in which a Dutchman is accosted by an elaborately dressed London prostitute.

The background shows the familiar arcades of the Piazza in Covent Garden (a notorious spot for prostitution in the 18th-century) along with baskets of fruit and vegetables (the legitimate day-to-day trade of the market). The woman’s elaborate and brightly coloured attire is intended by the artist to mark her as a prostitute.

The image was obviously popular and the British Museum records a smaller version (supposedly published in the same year). Both of the examples of the larger sized impression in the BM are numbered 455 in the lower left-hand corner but one has the date erased. Our example has the number in the lower left corner erased.

The title of the print references the very real naval battles that were taking place between the English and Dutch navies iduring the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War of 1780-1784. By 1780 the Dutch navy was significantly weakened and two months after this print was published the English beat the Dutch at the Battle of Dogger Bank.

Dighton’s original watercolour for this print from the collection of Mr Jeffrey Rose was sold at Sotheby’s, 23 February 1978, lot 91