A pencil, watercolour and bodycolour drawing of the arcades of the Covent Garden Piazza. A man with a bucket and ladder at the left, and another group of women, children and dogs near a sedan chair on the right. On a pink and grey wash-line bordered mount of a type associated with works sold at the Paul Sandby estate sale (see J. Roberts, Views of Windsor, exh cat 1997, p. 142), and lettered in pencil: Piazza Covent Garden, and T. Sandby delint. Stamped with Paul Sandby's collector's mark left corner (Lugt 2112).

Thomas Sandby made several drawings of Covent Garden, a busy trading area abundant with artists' lodgings near to St Martin's Lane and the Sandbys' own lodgings at 36 Poultney Street. In 1771 he exhibited a 'View from the Arcade in Covent Garden' at the Royal Academy', a perspective view drawn as part of his lectures as Professor of Architecture at the Royal Academy. This watercolour view is looser in treatment, especially when compared to the view of Covent Garden in the British Museum's Crowle Pennant. The figures are probably by Paul Sandby, and their fashions suggest a date of around 1770-80.

The drawing appears in the Paul Sandby estate sale, third day, lot 27, described in the catalogues as 'T. Sandby R.A. Two, the interior of Freemasons Hall, and Piazza, Covent Garden', although they were first bought by Shepperd for the Prince of Wales for 10 guineas and returned. An invoice in the Royal Archives (no. 27671) for 13 January 1812 is this drawing, £5 5s. Paul Sandby's PS collector's mark was possibly applied to all the material that was assembled in his estate sale.