The Cloak-Room, Clifton Assembly Rooms (painting)

a framed oil painting on canvas, showing: ladies and gentlemen, some in couples, arriving at a ball held at the Clifton Assembly Rooms; in the foreground, a maid helps to remove one lady's overshoes (these would have protected her satin shoes from the dirt of the streets); this work is recognised as the artist's earliest multi-figure painting, and is recorded in Ellen Sharples's (the artist's mother) diary, "In the course of the year 1817 she [Rolinda Sharples] began the cloak room at the ball, a group of 31 figure portraits finished in the year 1818. It attracted extraordinary attention during its progress."; the Clifton Assembly Rooms, in The Mall, Clifton, was designed by Francis H Greenway (1777-1837) as a hotel and assembly rooms for the Clifton Spa pump room; it was commenced in 1806 and completed by another architect in 1811, after Greenway's transportation to Australia for a conviction of forgery; it is now a private member's club; the room shown here was orginally the main ballroom