Playbill advertising a programme of tableaux vivants at the Ancient Hall of Rome, Great Windmill Street, London, 27 January 1846.

The grandly titled Ancient Hall of Rome was a building that underwent many name changes. Built as a tennis court in 1744, in the 1820s it was used for exhibitions and as a circus and a theatre, operating as the Royal Albion Theatre, the New Queen's Theatre, the Theatre of Arts and the Royal Albion Subscription Theatre. In the 1840s when John Dubourg exhibited mechanical waxworks there it was Dubourg's Theatre of Arts, but the name was changed to the Ancient Hall of Rome when Dubourg presented his tableaux vivants of classical and historical subjects in 1846. In 1851 it became the Argyll Rooms, assembly rooms with a dubious reputation which were closed in 1878, and then in 1882 it reopened as a music hall, the Trocadero Palace. In 1896 it was converted into a restaurant.

Tableaux vivants (living pictures) were popular in the 19th century. Appropriately costumed actors would be posed to represent historical scenes or to recreate paintings and sculptures. Dubourg's display included Canova's The Three Graces and works by Rubens, Raphael and more recent artists. Marshall Claxton and Edward Corbould had both been awarded prizes for drawings submitted in a competition to find appropriate subjects for murals to decorate the Houses of Parliament. According to Bell's Life in London of 18 January 1846, quoted on the playbill, 'The whole of the arrangements are got up with great taste, and excited enthusiastic applause.'