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.

Leaving off powder, or, A frugal family saving the guinea / Js. Gy. desn. et fect.

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James Gillray
1756-1815

Leaving off powder, or, A frugal family saving the guinea / Js. Gy. desn. et fect.

[London] : Pubd. March 10th, 1795, by H. Humphrey, No. 37 New Bond Street, [1795]
etching, hand colored
image: 231 x 346 mm; plate mark: 250 x 352 mm; sheet: 260 x 364 mm
Bequest of Gordon N. Ray, 1987.
1986.531
Provenance

From the library of Gordon N. Ray.

Summary

Print shows a domestic interior. A fat and ugly citizen, wearing old-fashioned dress with a small unpowdered wig, stands on the hearth-rug, his back to the fire; he is meditatively reading the 'Gazette', headed: 'New Taxes', and 'Bankru[pts]', his left hand plunged in his breeches pocket. Behind him on the chimney-piece is a pair of scales for weighing guineas. His wife, bald-headed and stout, leans back in an arm-chair, her hands raised in protest at an unpowdered wig which a thin and ragged French hairdresser proffers obsequiously. A fashionably dressed young man with cropped hair looks with surprise at his reflection in an oval mirror over the chimney-piece. His mouth is half-covered by his swathed neckcloth, he wears a short spencer over a sparrow-tail coat, and half-boots. A young woman with over-dressed but unpowdered hair looks with dismay at her reflection in a mirror. On the wall is an oval bust portrait of 'Charles 2d', his tiny head framed in an immense powdered wig.

Associated names
Humphrey, Hannah, active 1774-1817, publisher.
Ray, Gordon N. (Gordon Norton), 1915-1986, former owner.
Classification
Department