Policeman & the Perpendicular by John Dempsey - Place Mat

This image is from an impressive collection of watercolour images of London street people made by the itinerant English painter John Dempsey throughout the first half of the nineteenth century.

The exhibition profiles the stories of town-criers, match-sellers, chimney-sweeps, street-food vendors, and numerous other characters populating the urban landscape of Regency-era and early Victorian Britain.

Remarkable in their incisive realism and providing rare visual documentation of people otherwise overlooked by history, Dempsey's portraits bring to life the fictional worlds of writers like Charles Dickens, presenting a vivid and distinctive survey of street people in British cities and towns.

32cm x 23cm