Street Life: The “Cries” in British Visual Culture, 1711-1877

Introduction

The Merry Milk Maid, 1733. The Lewis Walpole Library

Street Life explores the long-established tradition in visual culture of depicting street vendors “crying” or broadcasting their wares. These images typically take the form of prints and belong to a genre that dates back at least to the sixteenth century in Europe and maps the economic and social life of cities through representations of diverse occupations and products. The exhibition focuses on vendors of food—the most essential category of all the commodities sold on the street—examining the enduring fascination these compelling images hold and exploring the lives of the people and of the foodstuffs that inspired them. It traces the history of the Cries genre in British art, from the Belgian artist Marcellus Laroon’s Cryes of the City of London Drawne after the Life, first published by Pierce Tempest in 1687, to John Thomson and Adolphe Smith’s Street Life in London of 1877.

Drawn from the collections of the Lewis Walpole Library, the Yale Center for British Art, and the Yale University Art Gallery, the exhibition focuses primarily on prints but also includes works in other media. Most of the prints were made and published in London, but some were produced in other British cities or on other continents. The inclusion of objects relating to the Caribbean, India, South America, Asia, and North America demonstrates that the Cries genre was transnational and mobile, spread by itinerant artists and the global circulation of prints.

Curated by Gillian Forrester, Independent Scholar

This online exhibit was produced in Omeka by Kristen McDonald, Public Services, The Lewis Walpole Library

For questions/comments, please contact The Lewis Walpole Library, walpole@yale.edu

Published April 2026