The Cloakroom, Clifton Assembly Rooms

The Cloakroom, Clifton Assembly Rooms
ArtistRolinda Sharples
Year1818
TypeOil on canvas, genre painting
Dimensions73 cm × 88.2 cm (29 in × 34.7 in)
Location

The Cloakroom, Clifton Assembly Rooms is an 1818 genre painting by the British artist Rolinda Sharples. Foster p. 36 It depicts the cloakroom of the Clifton Assembly Rooms during a ball.[1] Clifton was a fashionable suburb of the port city of Bristol during the Regency era and the Assembly Rooms had opened in 1811. It was the first group painting the artist produced.[2]

Loosely connected to the Bristol School of artists, the Bath-born Sharples produced a number of genre works. The image has become a popular one for illustrating the Regency era. Today the painting is in the collection of the City Museum and Art Gallery in Bristol, having been acquired in 1931.[3][4]

The painting has been used as the cover of several Jane Austen novels and books of her works, including some publications of Pride and Prejudice,[5] and Jane Austen: The World of Her Novels by Deirdre Le Faye.[6]

References

  1. ↑ Davidson p.196
  2. ↑ Carter p.35
  3. ↑ https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/the-cloak-room-clifton-assembly-rooms-189077
  4. ↑ https://shop.bristolmuseums.org.uk/products/pod1034573?srsltid=AfmBOoqxsaFniG3vbOXB9l5uIO8u7y_DWaeKxqIPGpmikUUhg_INoAFg&variant=39515469709470
  5. ↑ "Pride and Prejudice (The World's Classics)". Bookie. Retrieved 11 September 2025.
  6. ↑ Le Faye, Deirdre (1 September 2003). Jane Austen: The World of Her Novels. Frances Lincoln. ISBN 978-0711222786.

Bibliography

  • Carter, Julia. Bristol Museum and Art Gallery: Guide to the Art Collection. Bristol Books, 2017.
  • Davidson, Hilary. Dress in the Age of Jane Austen: Regency Fashion. Yale University Press, 2019.
  • Foster, Vanda. The Nineteenth Century. Batsford, 1984.