A pen and watercolour drawing of encampment in St James's Park set up during the Gordon Riots in 1780. Soldiers, horses and figures among tents in the park, with Westminster Abbey in the background. Inscribed in pencil on the mount, possibly in the artist's hand, 'Encampment in St James's Park, 1780', and in another hand known as the 'Colnaghi' hand, 'Paul Sandby'. 

From 1774, Paul Sandby lived opposite Hyde Park at 4 St George's Row, Bayswater. He made many drawings of the park, including a large number of drawings of the encampments set up in the park during the Gordon Riots in 1780. Over six days in June 1780, protests took place against the limited concessions of the first Catholic Relief Act, and to quell further riots, troops were stationed in St James's Park, the gardens of Montagu House, and Hyde Park, remaining in situ for several months. Despite their military function, the encampments soon became places of fashionable parade and entertainment: Lord Harcourt described that in St James's Park as 'so extremely pretty that you would be charmed with the sight of it'. Sandby's drawings often capture the sociable elements of the camps, even wryly including drunk or amorous soldiers 'guarding' Hyde Park. He sent several drawings to be exhibited at the Royal Academy the following year, as well as making marketable aquatints of the subjects. 

Sandby published an etching of the same subject in 1783. Other drawings of the camps in the Royal Collection are RCINs 451581-451586, 451590, 914678-914681 and 935206, with other examples elsewhere, including at the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven (B1981.25.2690) and Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery (1953P80). See also John Bonehill and Stephen Daniels (eds) Paul Sandby: Picturing Britain, exh cat, Nottingham Castle Museum etc., 2009, pp. 144-46.