The Bayswater Omnibus

This painting shows passengers inside a horse-drawn omnibus. Joy has painted the scene as if the viewer were seated on the opposite side of the vehicle. His wife and daughter posed as the mother and young girl on the left.

Joy described the people on the bus as follows: 'In the farthest corner sits a poor anxious mother of children, her foot propped on an untidy bundle; beside her, full of kindly thoughts about her, sits a fashionable young woman; next to her the City man, absorbed in his paper; whilst a little milliner, bandbox in hand, presses past the blue-eyed, wholesome looking nurse in the doorway.'