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.

A sphere projecting against a plane

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James Gillray
1756-1815

A sphere projecting against a plane

Published

[London] : Pubd. Jany. 3d. 1792 by H. Humphrey, N. 18 Old Bond Street, [1792]

etching, hand-colored
image: 267 x 213 mm; plate: 271 x 225 mm; sheet: 271 x 235 mm
Peel 2759
Notes
Printmaker from George.
Provenance

Formerly owned by Sir Robert Peel.

Summary

William Pitt, very thin, stands rigidly erect in profile to the right. Mrs. Hobart, immensely fat, completely fills a globe which stands on a rectangular platform on castors, and whose circumference rests against Pitt's post-like person. She looks up at him expectantly; he stares over her head with a pained expression. Beneath the title is etched: "Definitions from Euclid. Def: Ist B: 4th. A Sphere, is a Figure bounded by a Convex surface; it is the most perfect of all forms; its Properties are generated from its Centre; and it possesses a larger Area than any other Figure. - Def: 2d B: Ist A Plane, is a perfectly even & regular Surface, it is the most Simple of all Figures ; it has neither the Properties of Length or of Breadth ; and when applied ever so closely to a Sphere, can only touch its Superficies, without being able to enter it - Vide. Euclid, illustrated; by the Honble Mrs Circumference."

Associated names
Humphrey, Hannah, active 1774-1817, publisher.
Peel, Robert, 1788-1850, former owner.
Classification
Department