Accession number
PML 144634, fol. 21v-22r
Creator
Cruikshank, George, 1792-1878.
Published
London : Pubd by Thos. McLean, 26, Haymarket, Augt. 1st, 1819 [i.e. 1835?]
Credit line
Bequest of Gordon N. Ray, 1987.
Notes
Etching by George Cruikshank after a design by amateur caricaturist John Sheringham.
A reissue of a print originally published by G. Humphrey, July 15, 1819 and included in Thomas McLean's 1835 collective reissue of several Cruikshank etchings entitled "Cruikshankiana : an assemblage of the most celebrated works of George Cruikshank ...".
A later state, with G. Humphrey's original imprint imperfectly removed; McLean's imprint shows visible evidence of having been effaced and altered here to read "1819", probably sometime after printing.
Library's copy trimmed with loss of plate mark.
A reissue of a print originally published by G. Humphrey, July 15, 1819 and included in Thomas McLean's 1835 collective reissue of several Cruikshank etchings entitled "Cruikshankiana : an assemblage of the most celebrated works of George Cruikshank ...".
A later state, with G. Humphrey's original imprint imperfectly removed; McLean's imprint shows visible evidence of having been effaced and altered here to read "1819", probably sometime after printing.
Library's copy trimmed with loss of plate mark.
Description
1 print : etching, hand colored ; image: 243 x 342 mm; trimmed sheet: 247 x 344 mm
Provenance
From the library of Gordon N. Ray.
Summary
Print shows three fashionable dandies in a well-furnished room. One (left) sings, seated, and with a leg resting on a second (lyre-backed) chair; he leans sentimentally, hand on heart, towards a lutanist reclining on a (Regency) sofa playing an ornate curiously shaped instrument. The third stands behind the sofa, playing a flageolet, and admiring himself in a mirror above the ornate fireplace. The vocalist holds an open music-book: 'Love has eyes.' On the floor beside him are two others: 'The Lovesick Swain set to Music' and 'Our Warbling Notes and Ivory lutes Shall ravish every ear.' Two whole length portraits flank the mirror, one of a lady in quasi-Elizabethan dress, the other of a man similarly dressed, both having pinched waists and full busts. Below one is a picture of 'Vacuna' [Goddess of rural leisure], a blowzy woman lying under a tree; below the other, a grotesque 'Narcissus' admires his reflection. On the end of the sofa sits a grotesquely clipped (and dandified) poodle suckling puppies.
Classification
Catalog link
Department