Plan your visit. 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.

Plan your visit. 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.

A keen-sighted politician warming his imagination / Js. Gy. desn. et fect.

Image not available
James Gillray
1756-1815

A keen-sighted politician warming his imagination / Js. Gy. desn. et fect.

Published

[London] : H. Humphrey, 1795.

hand colored etching
image: 34.2 x 24 cm; plate: 25 x 35 cm; sheet: 35.9 x 26 cm
Purchased by J. Pierpont Morgan, 1900.
Peel 2873
Notes
A companion print to A keen-sighted politician finding out the British conquests (Peel 2865; George 8656).
Provenance

Formerly owned by Sir Robert Peel.

Summary

Lord Grenville stands on a hearth-rug, his back to a blazing fire (right), holding up to his face an open book inscribed: 'Fundamental Principles of Government for 1795', at which he looks sideways and near-sightedly. He raises his coat-tails to warm his bulky posteriors, his left hand in his breeches pocket. On the chimney-piece lie two books: 'Court Cookery' and 'Locke on Human Understanding'. Hanging above it is a 'Map of British Victories on the Continent' on which confused scrawls are depicted. On the back wall (left) is a bracket supporting a bowl of gold-fish, above which is a picture of the 'Treasury Bench': three Ministers seated as if in Parliament, in back view with their coats drawn aside to show their bulky posteriors; the wall of the Treasury forms a background.

Associated names
Gillray, James, 1756-1815, engraver.
Humphrey, Hannah, active 1774-1817, publisher.
Peel, Robert, 1788-1850, former owner.
Classification
Department