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Earlier this year I presented a Zoom lecture for the London Historians in which we took a tour around Charing Cross just prior to its sudden disappearance in the 1820s, when a vast enclave of streets and alleyways from that parish were swept away to enable the construction of Trafalgar Square. Luckily for us,  a young German artist named George Johann Scharf, who was living in St Martin’s Lane whilst this upheaval was in progress, was on hand to sketch and record this important step in the modernization of London.

George Scharf was a failed professional artist who scraped his living by illustrating scientific specimens for the likes of Sir Charles Darwin, yet could never quite suppress his fascination for London and its people. He spent many years sketching ordinary work-a-day Londoners and trades people in the streets where he lived, building up a formidable collection of scenes have become invaluable to our understanding of London as it was prior to the advent of photographic technology.

After Scharf died in extreme poverty in 1860, his estranged wife sold his sketch books to the British Museum. The Museum have so far digitized in excess of 1000 examples of Scharf’s work

My presentation is dedicated to the British Museum, without whose hard work Scharf would probably remain in obscurity, allowing new generations of Londoners to appreciate what a great artist and visual historian he was..