2-677-955 - Historic England Archive/Heritage Images

'Hyde Park Corner', 1825. Satirical print showing crowds of people looking at the Wellington Monument: a shocked woman is led away. The sculpture, in the corner of Hyde Park in Westminster, London, was designed by Richard Westmacott and cast from captured French cannon. The Duke of Wellington is represented symbolically as the naked hero Achilles. The head, if not the body, is said to be modelled on the Duke's. Unveiled in 1822, it was the first public nude statue in London since antiquity. From the Mayson Beeton Collection.