A pencil, pen and watercolour drawing of the Serpentine river in Hyde Park during the encampment set up during the Gordon Riots in 1780. A large mess tent on the right, with soldiers, camp followers, and passers by. On the left is a woman with a wheelbarrow, and a milk seller with two pails on the right. Inscribed in pencil on the mount, 'View near the Serpentine River Hyde Park during the Encampment (Camp) 1780' and in another hand, 'looking to Knightsbridge'. With an auctioneer's lot 2-82/1 connecting the drawing to the Paul Sandby estate sale, 3 May 1811, lot 82.

From 1774, Paul Sandby lived opposite Hyde Park at 4 St George's Row, Bayswater. He made many drawings of the park, including a large number of drawings of the encampments set up in the park during the Gordon Riots in 1780. Over six days in June 1780, protests took place against the limited concessions of the first Catholic Relief Act, and to quell further riots, troops were stationed in St James's Park, the gardens of Montagu House, and Hyde Park, remaining in situ for several months. Despite their military function, the encampments soon became places of fashionable parade and entertainment: Lord Harcourt described that in St James's Park as 'so extremely pretty that you would be charmed with the sight of it'. Sandby's drawings often capture the sociable elements of the camps, even wryly including drunk or amorous soldiers 'guarding' Hyde Park. He sent several drawings to be exhibited at the Royal Academy the following year, as well as making marketable aquatints of the subjects. 

An aquatint of the scene is no. VII of the series of encampments engraved by James Fittler and Francis Chesham, titled 'The Filbert Merchant in Hyde Park'. Other drawings of the camps in the Royal Collection are RCINs 451581-451586, 451590, 914678-914681 and 935206, with other examples elsewhere, including at the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven (B1981.25.2690) and Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery (1953P80). See also John Bonehill and Stephen Daniels (eds) Paul Sandby: Picturing Britain, exh cat, Nottingham Castle Museum etc., 2009, pp. 144-46.