Doré’s Famous London Picture — Actual Depiction Or Artistic Licence?

[Dr_Paul]

I've long been intrigued by Gustave Doré's famous drawings of Victorian London of the early 1870s, and have never been able to work out precisely where the scene he drew in this one actually was. There are, as can be seen, two parallel viaducts, a few hundred yards apart. But where in London does this actually occur? The only place in inner London which comes to my mind with two parallel viaducts is at Battersea, with the LBSCR South London Line and the LCDR line just to the north of the LSWR line to Waterloo. However, the streets on this map don't tally with the picture. Doré's drawings of London usually portray a specific place, such as Covent Garden, Gower Street station (now Euston Square), Pickle Herring Street, etc. Unless someone here can think of another example of parallel viaducts and streets which match the drawing, all I can assume is that Doré was using his imagination and engaging in a bit of artistic licence.


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[Rescars]

Approaches to London Bridge perhaps? I don't know enough, but if Doré customarily depicted actual buildings accurately, then the houses themselves appear pretty distinctive and may offer a lead.

 

[30907]

I would go with artistic licence - along with the rather 1840s loco.
I can't think of a landscape near the Thames which would justify such high viaducts - and I'm not convinced the one in the foreground would take double track!

 

[Gloster]

It may be a depiction of a real location but the vertical scale has been stretched for some reason. This makes the houses and viaducts appear taller than they actually were.

 

[Dr_Paul]

There are some non-railway details that make me think that Doré was using his imagination. Most houses for poorer people in London didn't have a back alley. It's highly unlikely that these sort of houses would have a chimney at the back of the house, as fireplaces were almost always on side walls with the chimneys above them, and there wouldn't be enough room for a fireplace on the back wall in the houses in the picture. (The chimney on each of the single-storey back additions is accurate, as this would be for the copper that provided warm water.)

 

[Dr Hoo]

A great deal of Doré's work was imaginative, conjectural, fantastic, mythical or whatever similar word you want to use. For example he extensively illustrated books like The Bible, Dante's Divine Comedy and Milton's Paradise Lost. These obviously didn't have locations that could be portrayed in a contemporary fashion.

I think that the sketch on the cover of Doré's London book might be a bit of a clue. It depicts Old Father Thames and a lion underneath a bridge. I have not been able to establish that that was authentic either.

 

[John Webb]

There are some non-railway details that make me think that Doré was using his imagination. Most houses for poorer people in London didn't have a back alley. It's highly unlikely that these sort of houses would have a chimney at the back of the house, as fireplaces were almost always on side walls with the chimneys above them, and there wouldn't be enough room for a fireplace on the back wall in the houses in the picture. (The chimney on each of the single-storey back additions is accurate, as this would be for the copper that provided warm water.)

I'm inclined to agree with you. The stepped roof ridge between buildings and the 'waisted' chimney-stacks I've never seen in London - for that matter that style of chimney-stack I've never seen anywhere in the UK! But I have seen stepped roof ridges in Yorkshire in particular and back-alleys appear in the Midlands and further north in much larger numbers. Based on somewhere in Manchester or Leeds, perhaps?