This is the first of a pair of plates accompanying Hogarth’s book The Analysis of Beauty, which were intended to show the reader ‘what sort of objects he is to look for and examine in nature or in the works of the great masters’. This shows John Cheere’s yard near Hyde Park Corner where ornamental statuary could be purchased. The border contains small diagrams showing the importance of the S-shaped curve, which Hogarth called the ‘line of beauty’. In the Royal Collection by 1845 Cat. 95