An Old Clothes Shop, Seven Dials
1877
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
1877
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
An Old Clothes Shop, Seven Dials is a 1877 by John Thomson, a Impressionism work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
You see a crowded second-hand clothes shop in London, racks of coats and hats spilling onto the sidewalk. This photo-like painting shows a place where people bought the cheapest clothes—stuff even pawnbrokers wouldn’t take. The shop was in Seven Dials, a rough neighborhood where street workers and the poor found bargains. The artist worked with a journalist to document how Londoners lived on almost nothing. To see more everyday scenes from this time, look up subject: england, 19th century.
According to John Thomson’s collaborator, journalist Adolphe Smith, the dealers in this neighborhood were sources of last resort for those trying to sell items that had already been rejected by pawnbrokers. They were also where “the majority of those individuals who earn a promiscuous livelihood in the streets of London succeed in clothing themselves for a minimum outlay.”
When this photo was taken, Seven Dials, a London neighborhood linking Covent Garden to Soho, was a slum that housed shops that bought and sold used clothing and furniture.
Read the full account in the museum source.
John Thomson painted Scottish landscapes in oil, focusing on the rugged terrain around the Trossachs and Selkirkshire.
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