The Fountain on the Prado, Madrid

David Roberts, who was from Edinburgh, visited Spain from 1832 – 3, five years after David Wilkie. It was the architecture, rather than the customs and costume of its inhabitants, which attracted him most of all. Here he depicts the fountain in the Retiro Park with the Observatory in the background. This was one of many of Roberts’s Spanish subjects which were reproduced as engravings in the Landscape Annual (1835 – 8). Purchased by Queen Victoria and given to Prince Albert for Christmas, 1841