Francis Hayman (1707/8-1776), Decorative painting for a supper-box at Vauxhall Gardens, London: "Sliding on Ice" [Also called "The Humorous Diversion of Sliding on the Ice"]. London, 1741-1742.

Landscape format oil painting showing figures sliding on an iced-over pond.

Purchased with Art Fund support

Purchased with the assistance of the National Art Collections Fund, 1947

Historical significance: Brian Allen, Francis Hayman, Published in association with English Heritage (the Iveagh Bequest, Kenwood) and Yale Center for British Art by Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1987, p.111-2, cat. no. 33.

Full Citation:

"33. SLIDING UPON THE ICE C. 1741-2 Oil on canvas, 55 x 96 (139.7 x 243.8)
Prov: painted for Vauxhall Gardens; Earl of Lonsdale; his sale, Lowther Castle, by Maple & Co., 30 April 1947 (1902); bt. Baron Hugo von Grundherr; acquired by the V & A in 1947

Engr: by R. Parr, published 23 May 1743

Coll: London, Victoria & Albert Museum

Seasonal pastimes provided the subject matter for several of the Vauxhall pictures (see cat. no. 30). As Joseph Strutt noted in 1830 'sliding upon the ice appears to have been a very favourite pastime among the youth of this country in former times; at present the use of skates is so generally diffused throughout the kingdom that sliding is but little practised, except by children and such as cannot afford to purchase them'.(1)

T. J. Edelstein has argued that the iconography of those supper box paintings depicting games of chance and risk can be traced back to the moral epigrams in traditional emblem books,(2) and John Lockman, who composed the following verses that appeared beneath Parr's engraving of this picture, must have been aware of that tradition:

Shew what Man in life's maturer Course,
An Infant still in purpose - but a Worse;
He trips his foremost down with joy of mind,
Nor sees th'impending danger from behind.

The viewer is presumably meant to associate a life of futile pleasure with ultimate disaster.

Despite recent conservation, Sliding upon the Ice is typical of the poor condition of most of the surviving supper box pictures. It is very thinly painted, rather in the manner of the stage scenery with which Hayman began his career, but has suffered extensively from the re-touching and overpainting that was done regularly to prepare the pictures for the new season in the open-air at Vauxhall.

Endnotes:
1) Joseph Strutt, The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England (London, 1830) p.86.

2) Yale 1983, p. 28."

This painting is one of seven in the V&A by Francis Hayman which relate to Hayman's work for the Vauxhall Gardens. See 'Historical Context' note on Museum Number P.12-1947 [May Day or The Milkmaid's Garland] for information about Hayman and the Vauxhall Gardens, from Brian Allen, Francis Hayman, Published in association with English Heritage (the Iveagh Bequest, Kenwood) and Yale Center for British Art by Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1987, Page 107-9.

Object Type
This painting was one of 50 supper box pictures at Spring Gardens, Vauxhall. They each formed the back of one `arbour' or supper box, an ornate wooden shelter formed of two side walls and a roof, framing picturesque views through the Gardens, where guests could take supper. At a certain moment in the evening's entertainment, the paintings were `let fall' to enclose the diners at the back. The front was left permanently open for the fashionable occupants to view and be viewed.

Subjects Depicted
As was appropriate for a pleasure garden, Francis Hayman was commissioned to paint scenes of people enjoying themselves in harmless sports and pastimes. In this part of the series of supper box pictures, he chose `children's games.' The sight of children sliding and playing on the ice was very frequent in the first half of the 18th century. The climate then was a cycle of hot summers and bitterly cold winters, so cold indeed that the Thames was frequently frozen over.

People
Francis Hayman began as a scene painter, then turned to portraiture. His first major decorative commission consisted of these large paintings at Spring Gardens, Vauxhall. The commission came from Hayman's patron, the entrepreneur Jonathan Tyers (died 1767), who held the lease on Spring Gardens and was responsible for opening them to the public in 1732.

P.13-1947