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.

To the mortal memory of Madam Geneva, who died Sepr. 29, 1736 [print] / I. Vandermijn invt. et sculp.

Accession number
PML 145850.226
Creator
Mijn, Heroman van der, 1684-1741.
Published
[London] : Published according to Act of Parliament Octr: 18. 1736. Sold by ye printsellers of London and Westminster, [Oct. 18, 1736
Credit line
Bequest of Gordon N. Ray, 1987.
Notes
Caption title.
Satire on the Act of 1736 taxing retail sales of gin and other spiritous liquors.
"Price 6.d".
Two columns of verse below: To thee, kind comfort of the starving poor! ... And drink a requiem to her peacefull urn.
Inserted as item 227 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).
Description
1 print : etching ; image: 265 x 204 mm; plate mark: 340 x 216 mm; sheet: 374 x 251 mm
Provenance
From the library of Gordon N. Ray.
Summary
Print shows a a funeral monument to "Madam Geneva". An old, toothless woman in rags, a slipper falling from her foot, reclines in the centre leaning against a barrel holding an empty glass in one hand and with the other pointing down to the relief on the base of the monument which shows a sun bearing the image of a still eclipsed by a dark shadow, a ribbon below lettered "cease to drop distill no more". Two small ragged dram sellers at her feet hold, respectively, an empty barrel and a stool, basket and empty mug.On the left, standing on an empty barrel, a weeping, pregnant fishwife holds an empty basket and ignores the crying child standing beside her; on the right, on another empty barrel, a mournful distiller leans on the worm of his redundant still. The back of the monument is formed by a wooden vat on top of which is an inverted tankard supporting the top of the still, hung with torn curtains, on which lounges a grenadier holding his gun and bayonet and pointing down to the label (a distiller's apron) dedicating the tomb "To the Mortal Memory of Madam Geneva. Who died Sept. 29. 1736. Her Weeping Servants & loving Friends consecrate This Tomb."
Classification
Department