A bull and mouth man Print

Accession number: 
PML 145850.190
Published: 
[England?] : [s.n.], [16--]
Description: 
1 print : mezzotint ; image: 175 x 141 mm; plate mark: 184 x 141 mm; sheet: 203 x 158 mm
Credit: 
Bequest of Gordon N. Ray, 1987.
Notes: 

Caption title.
Mezzotint is a reversed version of an engraving attributed to Richard Gaywood and generally identified as a portrait of Adoniram Byfield, with the image lacking the banderoles and lettering on the windmill blades present in Gaywood's design.
The "Bull and Mouth" was one of the earliest Friends' meeting-houses, making the identification of the subject of this particular print with puritan divine Adoniram Byfield an unlikely one; a version of Gaywood's design appeared as the frontispiece to William Jones, "Work for a Cooper", 1679, suggesting that it was therefore a portrait of the Quaker Thomas Wynne; it is also possible that this version, with the caption referring to the Bull and Mouth and without the lettering within the image, may have been intended as a generic attack on the Quakers rather than a satirical portrait of any specific individual.
Inserted as item 190 into an album of collected prints, broadsides, drawings, and miscellaneous single sheet items, assembled by former owner Joseph Ames and entitled "Emblematical and satirical prints on persons and professions" (PML 145850).

Provenance: 
From the library of Gordon N. Ray.
Summary: 

Satirical portrait of Adoniram Byfield or Thomas Wynne(?), shown three-quarters, holding a pair of gloves in his left hand and and facing three-quarters to the left, with the Devil at his shoulder blowing at a child's toy windmill fixed on his hat.

Classification: 
Department: