New Book | The Politics of Parody — Enfilade
From Yale UP: David Francis Taylor, The Politics of Parody: A Literary History of Caricature, 1760–1830 (New Haven: Yale University …Continue reading →
View ArticleThe Political House that Jack Built on Creamware
William Hone’s The Political House that Jack Built was arguably one of the most influential pieces of political satire published …Continue reading →
View Article‘Old Q’ Snuff Box c.1800
This snuff box was the latest caricature-related item to catch my eye whilst browsing through sales catalogues. It’s decorated with …Continue reading →
View ArticleA Merry Tale of the Jealous Weaver c.1745
This weeks ‘random item spotted in an auction catalogue’ is a mid-eighteenth-century satirical broadside which offers some truly awful advice …Continue reading →
View ArticleThe Prodigal Son’s Teapot c.1770
The Parable of the Prodigal Son was a recurrent theme in repertoire of the publishers of satirical prints during the …Continue reading →
View ArticleSavage Satire – An Exhibition of the Works of James Gillray
Fairfax House in York is currently hosting a James Gillray exhibition entitled Savage Satire. The exhibition features 35 original prints …Continue reading →
View ArticleWapping Old Stairs, After Thomas Rowlandson, 1814.
[UPDATE – JUNE 2019: A reader has contacted me to suggest that this drawing is a later imitation of Rowlandson’s …Continue reading →
View ArticleLecture: The Fantastic Visions of James Gillray, June 2019
Fairfax House’s Savage Satire exhibition will conclude with a lecture by Tim Clayton entitled The Fantastic Visions of James Gillray. …Continue reading →
View ArticleUnpicking William Heath
While doing some research for a writing project recently, I came across what appeared to be a rather puzzling …Continue reading →
View ArticleSutton Nicholls, The Compleat Auctioneer, c.1720
We make a rare foray into the world of early eighteenth-century graphic satire for this post on an engraving …Continue reading →
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The Danger & Folly of Going to Law
There’s an old joke which goes something like this: “I hear scientists have recently started using lawyers as opposed to rats for scientific experiments. They do this for two reasons; One, the...
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C.J. Grant, Twelfth Night Characters, 1833
The 5th January marks the arrival of Twelfth Night and the end of Christmas. Although barely acknowledged today – other than by the dour reminder that today is the day on which we must take down our...
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G.M. Woodward, Symptoms of the Shop, 1801
George Murgatroyd Woodward was born in the parish of St Giles-in-the Fields in the spring of 1766. His father William was a successful surveyor who kept his offices in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. William...
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Sketched by Humphrey, Spoiled by Gillray, 1781.
Living as we do in the post-deferential era of Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, it’s perhaps hard for us to appreciate the comparatively confined sociability of our eighteenth-century forebears. This...
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James Gillray, Love in a Coffin, c.1784
Continuing the previous post’s theme of esoteric prints that reflect the relative intimacies of social life in the late eighteenth-century, I’d like to consider another unusual engraving by James...
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Britannia and the British Museum
It seems as though posts about prints by James Gillray are a bit like buses – You wait ages for one and three turn up in quick succession. I hadn’t planned to write another piece on Gillray this...
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Thomas Rowlandson after Sir Joshua Reynolds, Count Ugolino… c. 1773
If one were to imagine the sort of painting likely to capture the imagination of the caricaturist Thomas Rowlandson then it’s unlikely that Sir Joshua Reynold’s Count Ugolino and his Children in the...
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Original works by Robert Dighton (1751 – 1814) – The David Padbury Collection...
A large collection of original works by the caricaturist Robert Dighton came up at auction in London earlier this week. All of the items were formerly part of a collection of prints, paintings and...
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Rare Rowlandson self-portrait goes on sale
A rare self-portrait by the caricaturist Thomas Rowlandson will be going under the hammer at Bonham’s UK auction house in a few weeks time. The pencil, ink and watercolour sketch shows Rowlandson (on...
View ArticleNew book: C.J. Grant’s Political Drama: Radicalism and Graphic Satire in the...
You might have noticed that things have been rather quiet around here for the last year or two? There are a lot of reasons for this: I have a family and a job like many of you, but I’ve also been...
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