Between the City Road basin and the Islington tunnel, the Regent’s Canal progresses down a short straight paralleled by the idyllic gardens of Noel Street (now Noel Road) to the north and a road called Vincent Terrace to the south. The Hanging Gardens depicts the view looking north across the canal towards a property where Sickert took rooms in 1924. The title makes a humorous allusion both to the hanging gardens of Babylon and the hanging of laundry on washing lines, thus marrying hyperbole and bathos. It is the end of the day, shadows fall to the right under the influence of the western sky, and the washing is being gathered indoors. This is one of the earliest of Sickert’s etchings published by the Leicester Galleries. The second state was advertised in 1926, while the third and final state—complete with the Leicester Galleries’ lettering—was printed in 1929.