Plate 7 from the first and most famous series of ‘London Cries’ produced by Colnaghi & Co after the works by Francis Wheatley, exhibited by him at the Royal Academy between 1792 and 1794 and published by them from 1795; this plate in January of that year. All respectfully record the working Londoners who would make their living on the streets, calling their ‘cries’ as they went, from sale to sale; job to job. This plate showing a vendor of ‘Fresh Gathered Peas Young Hastings’; the word ‘hastings’ derived or corrupted from hasty, hastily grown; new and young; not old and starchy. Fourteen works by Wheatley were exhibited over the period and to great acclaim, such that Colnaghi quickly agreed to publish the group as a suite, dropping one from the eventual set, which were sold individually or in a portfolio collection of thirteen. The prints were stipple engraved by some of the best and most highly regarded engravers of the Georgian period, this plate by Giovanni Vendramini; others by Thomas Gaugain or Luigi Schiavonetti. It is interesting to note that complete collections of the "Cries" remained immensely popular, and by 1910 they were fetching more at auction than even James Audubon's folio "Birds of America". Within a replica of a Georgian period print frame. Item Code: 5794