Two new sliders for the state magic lanthern

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Thomas Rowlandson
1756-1827
Two new sliders for the state magic lanthern
[London] : Pub 29th Decr. 1783, by W. Humphrey, 227 Strand, [1783]
etching
image: 201 x 324 mm; plate mark: 235 x 334 mm; sheet: 243 x 341 mm
Peel 2415
Provenance: 
Formerly owned by Sir Robert Peel.
Notes: 

Attributed to Thomas Rowlandson. Cf. British Museum online catalog.

Summary: 

A series of ten images showing the rise and fall of the Fox-North Coalition. In the first image, Charles Fox, shown as a fox, speaks to the crowd in front of the Covent Garden Church. In the second one, Lord North, the 'country gentleman' leading sheep on strings, makes an agreement with Fox, who leads the 'Wes[tminste]r geese' on strings. The third image shows Fox speaking to a crowd in a rotunda, while in the fourth one he is stoking a fire around a pole topped with the liberty cap and the India charter suspended from it. In the fifth image, North and Fox, sharing one coat, stand on a plinth signed, "Power." The sixth image shows Fox ascending in an air balloon while the next one shows him falling head-down into a "pitt." In the eighth image, the two politicians are being rejected by the figure of Britannia, who refuses to look at them, instead pointing to the gallows in the background. This condemnation results in their execution, together with Burke, in the ninth image. In the tenth image, all three are shown as well-known mythological sinners in Hades; Burke submerged up to his neck as Tantalus, Fox stretched on a wheel as Ixion, and North as Sisyphus pushing a large boulder.

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