The Thames as a gateway to foreign trade routes. Etching by J. Barry, 1791.

A river god representing the River Thames sits on a chariot, centre, accompanied by nereids in the water. Also standing in the water at the front of the chariot is Captain Cook, behind him are Sir Francis Drake and Sir Walter Raleigh, and to right is a man identified in the British Museum catalogue (and elsewhere) as Dr Charles Burney, the scholar and composer of music. Cook, Raleigh and Burney are clothed. Left, figures representing Europe, Africa, America and Asia (but not Australia). Above, Hermes or Mercury holding the caduceus in his right hand and trumpeting the fame of the Thames with a Roman tuba (or similar) held in his left hand

Wood, loc. cit., identifies the figures in the water as Drake, Raleigh, Sebastian Cabot, Captain Cook and Burney, the last being included as a representative of music; Burney's inclusion is described in the Microcosm of London (1809) as "a whim equally absurd and incomprehensible"

Hudson and Luckhurst, loc. cit., call the painting "Commerce, or the triumph of the Thames", and quote an unattributed comment on Burney's depiction in the water: "It irks me to see my good friend Dr Burney paddling in a horse pond with a bevy of naked wenches" (a sightly different wording is given in In Elysium, op. cit., p. 23)

[London] : [...] publish'd by James Barry, R.A. Professor of Painting to the Royal Academy, May 1 1791.

1 print : etching ; platemark approximately 42 x 51 cm

The Thames, or the triumph of navigation. Nor are his blessings to his banks confin'd But free and common as the sea or wind, So that to us, nothing no place is strange While his fair bosom is the world's exchange.--Denham. Painted, engraved & publish'd by James Barry, R.A. Professor of Painting to the Royal Academy May 1. 1791. 5th Verses quoted in lettering are from Cooper's Hill, verses 179-180 and 187-188, by John Denham, 1642, published in his Poems and translations (1668)

State with inclusion of light-house in bay on right.

Sir Henry Trueman Wood, A history of the Royal Society of Arts, London 1913, p. 76

Derek Hudson and Kenneth W. Luckhurst, The Royal Society of Arts, 1754-1954, London 1954, p. 24

In Elysium: prints by James Barry, Canterbury 2010, pp. 11-13, 23

Wellcome Collection 12117i

After one of the six paintings of "The progress of civilisation" painted by Barry for the Royal Society of Arts, London, from 1777 to 1783