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Banks are prestigious buildings in townscapes, and so feature incidentally in some urban landscapes and topographical paintings. The Bank of England, in particular, is an important and prominent London institution. The Bank’s own collection includes portraits of its founders and governors, sometimes posed undertaking its administrative activities.
Hick’s Dividend Day at the Bank of England is a rare attempt to make financial events visually dramatic, although there are a few other nineteenth-century narrative paintings, such as the anxious customers in Horsley’s The Banker’s Private Room and Harvey’s The Penny Bank.
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Sharples’ The Stoppage of the Bank illustrates the fragility of early financial institutions, although the Stock Exchange itself appears rarely in paintings on Art UK.
Artworks
The Stoppage of the BankRolinda Sharples (1793–1838)
Bristol Museum & Art Gallery
The Money Changers British (English) School (possibly)
College of Optometrists
The Banker's Private Room, Negotiating a LoanJohn Callcott Horsley (1817–1903)
Royal Holloway, University of London
The Penny BankGeorge Harvey (1806–1876)
The Fleming Collection
Joseph Lardner, Poor Rate Collector in the Parish of St Bartholomew the Great unknown artist