Painting in Corridor

The large painting hanging in the corridor, ‘Scarborough Spa Promenade’ by Thomas Jones Barker, always attracts great interest when the story behind it is explained to visitors. The Prince and Princess of Wales and Lord Londesborough are prominent figures, depicted as visiting the Spa in 1870. For a fee, of up to 100 guineas, Oliver Sarony, the artist and photographer, took photographs of prominent people and passed them to Barker for incorporation in the picture. The higher the fee, the nearer your likeness would be to the royal couple. For their fee, their names were also recorded for posterity, as a key identifying everyone on the picture is displayed alongside it. The painting is fictitious, as the royal couple did not walk at the Spa in 1870, however it is believed they did visit Scarborough on other occasions. In his ‘Book of Scarbrough Spaw’ Sir Meredith Whittaker refers to the painting as a ‘gigantic fraud’.