He was ‘the greatest master of pure line that England has ever had the good fortune to produce’. [1] Sir Osbert Sitwell’s declaration has been echoed time and again by scholars and admirers of Thomas Rowlandson alike. His eminent pen line, remarkable for its versatility, was consistently expressive, often economical, and rarely imprecise. In a single drawing, Rowlandson’s line can shift from flexible, graceful, and serpentine, continuous and looping, to strokes that are broken, contracted, and pliant. These may be seen, for example, in the internal modelling of a figure’s torso or in the roughing-out of shadows already laid in with grey wash. Regardless of the technique, it is this line, this idiosyncratic calligraphy, that invests his forms with striking vigour, abounding life, and the essential comic gesture. As a result, his figures were endowed with the potential to assume any shape and to move in any way.

La Comédie humaine, as presented by Rowlandson in its many and varied manifestations, is typically set on an English stage and performed by caricatured types. The degree to which each individual figure is caricatured depends, to a greater or lesser extent, on the intended effect of the composition, and no less importantly, on the dynamics between the surrounding characters. The obscure line, the hidden code that Rowlandson instinctively perceived within the realm of tragicomic spectacle, a seam that at once joins and separates tragedy and comedy, is manipulated through the artist’s formidable inventiveness to illustrate situations that, in their very essence, are morbid and frightful, yet through Rowlandson’s clever contrivances, become delightful occasions for humour: 'That we respond to the drawing as humour is due to a complex intermingling of various factors: caricature, action, pictorial arrangement, verbal labels, and, ultimately, the actual medium the drawing is executed. There is nothing unequivocally comic about any of these factors in isolation any more than there is about the situation itself, but they come together to create an effect that is unmistakably comic.' [2] A vivid example of Rowlandson’s gallows humour, the present watercolour depicts a fierce ox causing chaos on London Bridge, a scenario far from uncommon in the city at the time. Rowlandson’s handling of the subject modifies the horror into visual comedy, turning fear into farce. He deliberately omits the most gruesome aspects, such as bloodletting and impalement, and with considerable skill redirects our attention to the comedic unpredictability of the situation. Skaters on the Serpentine (1784), Vauxhall Gardens (c.1784), The French & English Reviews (c.1785) and The Prize Fight (1787) are widely regarded as Rowlandson’s finest works. The Overdrove Ox (c. 1787) dates from the final years of this period.

The scene is set on the north bank of the Thames with the church of St Magnus-the-Martyr, which still survives to this day, standing at the end of London Bridge, its famous distinctive clock watching over the spectacle. This clock was presented to the church in 1709 by Sir Charles Duncombe, Alderman for the Ward of Bridge Within and Lord Mayor of London. According to tradition 'it was erected in consequence of a vow made by the donor [Duncombe], who, in the earlier part of his life, had once to wait a considerable time in a cart upon London Bridge, without being able to learn the hour, when he made a promise, that if he ever became successful in the world, he would give to that Church a public clock…that all passengers might see the time of day.' [3] Dickens described the spire of the church in Oliver Twist as a 'giant-warder of the ancient bridge' whilst almost a century later in The Waste Land, T.S. Eliot wrote that 'the walls of Magnus Martyr hold inexplicable splendour of Ionian white and gold.' [4] Having stood for nearly six centuries, the houses on the bridge were finally demolished in 1761. Under the direction of George Dance the Elder and Sir Robert Taylor, major and much-needed renovations commenced the year after. The newly cleared space allowed the carriageway to be widened to 46 feet, while a central span — the Great Arch — replaced two existing arches to accommodate larger ships. Gothic balustrades lined the parapets on both sides, interspersed with fourteen ten-foot-tall stone alcoves, giving the bridge a measured elegance that complemented its newly expanded form. [5]

Around 1787, when this watercolour was painted, London Bridge remained one of only three river crossings in central London. [6] Drovers entering the city from the counties of Kent, Surrey, and Sussex were required to drive their cattle across London Bridge to reach Smithfield Market, a five-acre site in the ward of Farringdon and the hub of London’s livestock trade in the eighteenth century. The rapid growth of urbanisation during this period, coupled with the increasing demand for meat, unavoidably led to overcrowding among cattle, horses, and pedestrians on London’s narrowing streets. Bullocks, as might be expected, were not easily controlled. [7] A considerable degree of force was required from the drovers to keep the oxen, accustomed to grazing in open fields, moving through the confined and unfamiliar bustle of the city. Additionally, bull-terriers, or ‘butchers’ dogs,’ were used to pressure the cattle into motion by nipping at their feet. Indeed, Rowlandson depicts three such dogs pursuing the maddened bull in The Overdrove Ox. These methods were severe and often provoked the very madness the drovers sought to prevent (see George M. Woodward, Miseries of Human Life, “As you are quietly walking…,” 1809, hand-coloured etching, Boston Public Library, The Albert H. Wiggin Collection). Incidentally, the still widely used idiom ‘like a bull in a china shop’ originated from real incidents of ‘mad’ bulls wreaking havoc in London shops around the time Rowlandson painted this watercolour (see William Austin, A Peep in a Camp Kitchen by an Overdrove Ox, 1780, etching, British Museum). [8] Nonetheless, the phrase ‘overdrove’ implies that if a bullock ran wild, the fault lay with the drover, whether through excessive goading, negligence, or unchecked cruelty. Drovers were easy scapegoats, and routinely castigated by an increasingly frustrated public, but they were manifestly not the only cause of the problem. Between 1784 and 1796, one tenth of all recorded street offences in the capital were related to the mistreatment of cattle. [9] These offences included throwing stones at the animals, startling them with shouts, and chasing them through the city’s thoroughfares.

The socio-political symbolism of an untamed bull charging through the streets was most effectively employed by James Gillray in his 1796 print, Promis’d Horrors of the French Invasion. As a metaphor for mob rule, the feared French proletarian invasion, and unleashed anarchy, it became a recurring motif in English satirical prints responding to the French Revolutionary Wars. In Rowlandson’s watercolour, created just two years before the storming of the Bastille, the rampaging ox and the agitated mob behind it, armed with sticks and clubs, form an almost indivisible force of chaos. [10] Nevertheless, prescient and profound political references appeared only sporadically in Rowlandson’s work. Despite his apparent lack of interest in this area, the playfulness of his art tends to resist rigid political framing. The composition of The Overdrove Ox is structured around a strong receding diagonal, with the bridge’s shape and curve reinforcing the visual momentum. Nearly all elements are integrated into this dominant line, with distinct groups of figures following secondary diagonals that descend toward the foreground. Balancing this movement, the church rises as a stabilising vertical, while the darkened repoussoir on the left directs the eye along another descending diagonal. As the post-chaise crashes into a tangle of market sellers, the contortions of the figures, lurching horses, and upheld horse’s whip form a dynamic pyramid. Within this group, Rowlandson makes use of one of his signature comic devices, contrast. On the left of this vignette, a legless beggar holds a dismissive hand up to the approaching collision. He may be blind, for he continues to beg, seemingly untroubled by the chaos around him. On the right of this scene, seated within the post-chaise, a gentleman looks out with almost stolid enquiry at a man falling from the bridge. [11] Like the beggar he sits upright and gazes straight ahead. These two figures contrast strikingly with those positioned between them: two screaming women, a crying child, and a whining horse. [12] All four look up and to the right, their bodies slumped and angular. A straight, descending diagonal of open, shrieking faces runs from top left to bottom right — horse, woman carrying a bundle on her head, market trader, then child, safe for now in an upturned fruiterer's basket — a thrust of fear contrasting with the vertical composure of the beggar and the gentleman in the carriage. [13]

'The surge of violent movement was where Rowlandson excelled.' [14] This mastery of dynamic action is evident in the interplay of motion and inevitable counter-movements throughout the composition, which demonstrates all three of Newton’s laws of motion in action. The frieze-like arrangement and continuous spiraling undulation of the central scene are composed to 'offer maximum opportunity for the development of narrative incident.' [15] Some figures are interlocked, some falling, others climbing, while one man — likely the stagecoach’s armed guard — takes aim at the ox with a flintlock blunderbuss over the carriage’s rear wheel (the Greenwich to Blackheath Machine). [16] In front of the carriage, an opportunistic old man has conveniently fallen onto the back of a young, attractive milkmaid. His expression reveals delight at this unexpected good fortune, though it may well be his last. An archetypal matriarch stares in terror at the ox from the tipping coach’s window, arms flung wide and wearing an enormous bonnet. Rowlandson revisited this motif a few years later in The Cockermouth Post Coach, which today belongs to the Royal Collection. Through these vividly depicted reactions, he renders the attitudes and expressions of his entwined cast with incisive satirical nuance. As Vic Gatrell notes, ‘For Rowlandson the moment when chaos descends is no time for pity, alarm or moralising. Rather, it catapults people into a betrayal of their unveneered and common humanity, and thus becomes a moment for high comical observation.’ [17]

'The whistling, the hooting, the hallooing, and the running of the drovers in pursuit—men, women, and children, scampering to get out of the way of the infuriated beast—the noise and rattling of carriages. Here, a poor half-starved and almost frightened-to-death brat of a Chimney-sweeper, in haste to escape, had run against a lady whose garments were as white as snow—there, a Barber had run against a Parson…'  [18]