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.

The Fall of Dagon- or Rare news for Leadenhall Street

Thomas Rowlandson
1756-1827

The Fall of Dagon- or Rare news for Leadenhall Street

Published

[London] : Publish'd Jany. 4. 1784 by W. Humphrey, 227 Strand, [1784]

etching
image: 189 x 290 mm; plate mark: 236 x 31 mm; sheet: 209 x 290 mm
Purchased by J. Pierpont Morgan, 1900.
Peel 2461
Notes
Printmaker from British Museum online catalog.
Title from item.
Library's copy trimmed within plate mark.
Provenance

Formerly owned by Sir Robert Peel.

Summary

The image of Dagon has fallen from an overturned rectangular pedestal (right) whose base is inscribed 'Broad Bottom'. The image is a stout man with a double-faced, Janus-like head, consisting of the faces of North and Fox, decapitated; the hands are severed at the wrists; it lies prone, the face of North to the ground, that of Fox uppermost. In the distance is Tower Hill, with a scaffold surrounded by tiny figures representing a crowd. A figure kneels before a block, the headsman's axe is raised. In the middle distance (left) is the gable end of an inn, its sign that of a headsman's axe. A stout man stands beneath it. It is inscribed 'Tower Hill'. Beneath the title is engraved: 'And behold Dagon was fallen upon his face to the ground before the ark of the Lord & the head of Dagon and both the Palms of his hands were cutt off upon the threshold.' Cf. British Museum online catalog.

Associated names
Humphrey, William, approximately 1740-approximately 1810, publisher.
Peel, Robert, 1788-1850, former owner.
Classification
Department
Century prints