Hot Spice Gingerbread - smoaking hot!

One of a series of engravings derived from a set of paintings by Francis Wheatley entitled The ‘Cries of London’. ‘Hot Spice Gingerbread' features an attractive street vendor selling a pieces of gingerbread cake. Wheatley’s paintings of the ‘Cries’ were exhibited at the Royal Academy between 1792 and 1795 and were extremely popular. As the paintings attracted a large amount of attention Colnaghi agreed to publish a set of engravings, of which this is one.

They portrayed a range of idealised street vendors selling a range of goods including primroses, milk, oranges, matches, mackerel, cherries and chairs, highlighting the fact that these street sellers advertised their goods with a musical shout or a melodic rhyme. They present a sanitised view of the London streets and through their frequent reproduction are in part responsible for the persistence of this romanticised view life on the London streets.