View across a bridge to a modern city

Addey employed watercolour with controlled washes and sharp, geometric brushwork to define the bridge’s framework and the city’s facades. The medium’s translucency allows underlying pencil lines to remain visible, reinforcing the drawing’s sense of immediacy. Forms are simplified into clean planes, reflecting his advertising background where clarity and impact were essential, even in personal work.

Created during Addey’s decades-long career with London advertising agencies, this piece likely dates to the 1950s. It was not commissioned but rather a private response to the city’s rapid modernization. The work remained in private hands until its acquisition by the Victoria and Albert Museum, where it now serves as a quiet counterpoint to his more commercial output.

Post-war Britain saw widespread rebuilding and a surge in urban planning. Addey, immersed in commercial imagery promoting consumer goods, also documented the physical reshaping of the city. This watercolour mirrors broader cultural interests in progress and modernity, yet avoids propaganda, offering instead a restrained, observational record of infrastructure in flux.

Addey’s watercolour stands as a modest but significant example of an illustrator turning his trained eye toward personal subject matter. It reveals how commercial artists absorbed the visual language of their time and applied it beyond advertising. The work contributes to a quieter archive of mid-century British urban life, valued for its honesty over spectacle.