James
Gillray
Checklist Part 7
123
THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW OF DEATH.
Published by Hannah Humphrey: September 24, 1808
Etching and aquatint with engraving, hand-colored
This print was inspired by the news of Sir Arthur Wellesley’s
victory over French forces under Junot at Vimeiro in Portugal (August
21, 1808). Although claims of Napoleon’s imminent doom, bolstered
by the Spanish resistance, were premature, victories at Baylén
and Vimeiro, among others, proved that the French were not unbeatable.
Gillray ironically portrays Napoleon as Christian, the protagonist of
John Bunyan’s anti-Catholic tract The Pilgrim’s Progress.
The beleaguered Emperor faces a frontal attack from Death on a
Spanish mule, a Portuguese wolf, a Sicilian terrier, and the British
lion, while his Russian ally, portrayed as a bear, seems restless. On
the left, Napoleon’s brother, King Joseph of Spain, only his crown
and his hands visible, drowns in the Ditch of Styx. An Austrian eagle
swoops down from the sky, while out of the murky ditch in the foreground
hop, slither, and crawl Dutch spitting frogs, an American rattlesnake,
and a “Rhenish Confederation of Starved Rats.” However, by
1810, Napoleon had reached the height of his fortunes. Only with the
disastrous Russian campaign in 1812 did the tide of the war irrevocably
turn. Gillray never saw the final defeat of “Little Boney.” Insane
by the end of 1810, Gillray died on June 1, 1815, at age 58. Napoleon
lost the Battle of Waterloo on June 18 and abdicated on June 22, 1815.
124
SHAKESPEARE-SACRIFICED; – or – The Offering to AVARICE.
Published by Hannah Humphrey: June 20, 1789
Etching and aquatint with engraving, hand-colored
For much of the eighteenth century, English patricians collected Old
Master paintings by European artists, virtually ignoring their own native
painters. To address this slight and to create a school of English history
painting, John Boydell, printseller and engraver, undertook a campaign
to commission British artists to paint works on Shakespearean themes.
The project was to be funded by the sale of prints engraved after those
paintings, and ultimately assembled in an illustrated edition of Shakespeare.
The first group of thirty-four paintings by eighteen artists went on
view at Boydell’s Shakespeare Gallery in May 1789; the first one
hundred engravings were issued in a set of nine volumes in 1802. Unfortunately,
war with France ended the export market for the Shakespeare engravings
and led to Boydell’s ruin.
Gillray was not invited to engrave any of the commissioned paintings,
and he exacted his revenge in this print. Alderman Boydell is seen kneeling
before an altar where copies of Shakespeare’s plays are consumed
by fire, fanned by a fool; within the rising smoke, which obscures a
statue of Shakespeare, are figures from paintings by Reynolds, West,
Fuseli, Northcote, Barry, and Opie, commissioned by Boydell. Gillray
implies that Boydell was motivated purely by Avarice, here a strange
gnome who, perched on a bound volume of subscribers’ names, clutches
two moneybags. Vanity, blowing a bubble of Immortality, perches on Avarice’s
shoulder. Gillray also takes a swipe at the Academy by including, in
the left foreground, a little boy, palette and brushes in hand, who prevents
a second child, with an engraver’s burin, from entering the hallowed
circle of the Royal Academy (the Greek words within, which translate
as “Let no stranger to the Muses enter,” were inscribed above
the Academy’s Great Exhibition Room at Somerset House). Engravers,
considered to be mere copyists, did not qualify for full membership in
the Academy. Gillray’s print was apparently very popular with Boydell’s
artists, who “could neither eat, drink or sleep til they had procured
this print.” Draper Hill notes that colored impressions of Shakespeare-Sacrificed were not issued until 1800.
125
TITIANIUS REDIVIVUS; – or – The Seven-Wise-Men consulting
the new Venetian Oracle, - a Scene in ye Academic Grove, No. 1
Published by Hannah Humphrey: November 2, 1797
Etching and aquatint with engraving, hand-colored
Gillray takes on the Royal Academy in this exposé of a ruse perpetrated
on certain gullible members of the Academy by a young woman, Mary Anne
Provis, and her father, who purported to have learned the secret of Titian’s
coloring from an early Venetian manual in their possession. They may
have given this recipe (the “Venetian secret”) gratis to
Benjamin West, President of the Academy, but a consortium of artists,
here seated in a row, punctuated by speech bubbles and picture frames,
paid 10 guineas apiece for that information (among them are Farington,
Westall, Stothard, Smirke, Opie, and Hoppner). Other artists, whose names
appear on the portfolios on the far left (including Bartolozzi, Fuseli,
Paul Sandby, J.M.W. Turner, and Richard Cosway) thought the formula was
a hoax. Their portfolios provide a target for a urinating monkey. Miss
Provis herself appears atop a rainbow, painting a “portrait” of
Titian, her train supported by the Graces. In the far right foreground,
Benjamin West, seemingly in collusion with John Boydell, in the center,
sneaks away with Thomas Macklin, publisher of several of Gillray’s
earliest plates, who planned a gallery dedicated to biblical illustrations
and British poets, similar to the Shakespeare Gallery. The ghost of Sir
Joshua Reynolds rises up from the stone floor. In the background, the
Somerset House façade of the Royal Academy is cracking, perhaps
in response to the poor showing made by “Venetian” pictures
in the 1797 Academy exhibition (none in the “Venetian manner” were
submitted in 1798). As Richard Godfrey has noted, Gillray probably inscribed
this satire “Scene in ye Academic Grove, No. 1” to stir up
members of the Royal Academy (in fact, there were no additional prints).
126
The Charm of Virtu – or- A Cognoscenti Discovering the Beauties
of an Antique Terminus
Pen and ink, 1794
Gillray’s portrait of Richard Payne Knight, a collector and “self-appointed
arbiter of taste,” was never translated into a print. Richard Godfrey
describes Knight in this drawing as holding an “‘Antique
Terminus’ his thumb buttressing the figure’s erect member,
which he observes with enthusiasm through a magnifying glass.” Godfrey
suggests that the drawing was prompted by an attack on Knight’s
essay Discourse on the Worship of Priapus.
Diana Donald notes that Payne Knight wrote some unflattering stanzas
about caricaturists, whom he grouped with “satirists and anonymous
libelers and critics,”
Like maggots hatch’d in summer’s moontide
hour,
The filth, which gives them being, they devour …
Crawl out like bugs, conceal’d in shades of night,
Unknown to all, but when they stink or bite …
Thus Pindars, Pasquins, sketchers and reviewers,
Still rise in shops, to set in common sewers.
127
A COGNOCENTI contemplating ye Beauties of ye Antique.
Published by Hannah Humphrey: February 11, 1801
Etching with roulette, hand-colored
Gillray shows connoisseur, archaeologist, and diplomat Sir William Hamilton
surrounded by works of art that refer to the well-known affair between
his wife, Lady Emma Hamilton, and the naval hero Horatio Nelson. Hamilton
studies a damaged bust of Lais, the beautiful mistress of the classical
philosopher Aristippus of Cyrene, which here represents Lady Hamilton.
Framed pictures on the wall reinforce the theme of adultery. Lady Hamilton
as Cleopatra offers a glass of gin to an adjacent picture of Marc Antony,
who resembles Nelson. Hamilton as the Roman emperor Claudius, who was
betrayed by his wife, is framed under a cuckold’s antlers. A picture
of an erupting volcano refers to Hamilton’s research on earthquakes
and volcanoes, which he published in several treatises between 1772 and
1783, including Observations on Mount Vesuvius.
128
A Peep at Christies; – or – Tally-ho, & his Nimeney-pimmeney,
taking the Morning Lounge.
Published by Hannah Humphrey: September 24, 1796
Etching and aquatint, hand-colored
James Christie, who conducted his first sale on December 5, 1766, was
a friend to such celebrated artists as Gainsborough and Reynolds, and
his auction house was a gathering place for fashionable London society.
Gillray here shows Lord Derby with the actress Elizabeth Farren, studying
paintings on view in the exhibition rooms at Christie’s. In Gillray’s
title, “Tally-ho” refers to Lord Derby’s reputation
as a great hunter (also reflected in the painting on the wall, “The
Death”), and “Nimeney-pimmeney” to Miss Farren’s
successful portrayal of Nimeney-pimmeney in General Burgoyne’s
The Heiress, a work dedicated to Lord Derby.
129
The MARRIAGE of CUPID & PSYCHE.
Published by Hannah Humphrey: May 3, 1797
Etching and aquatint
Though the relationship between Lord Derby and the actress Elizabeth
Ferren began as early as 1781, it was said that it remained platonic
until Lord Derby’s estranged wife died on March 14, 1797, after
a long illness. Within three weeks of the first Lady Derby’s passing,
Miss Farren gave up the stage, and on May 1 she became the new Lady Derby.
Gillray celebrates the wedding in this parody of the famous cameo known
as the Marlborough Gem, now in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The artist
emphasizes the height disparity between husband and wife, and bestows
a bonnet rouge on Lord Derby for his Republican sympathies.
130
MAECENAS, in pursuit of the Fine Arts; – Scene, Pall Mall;
a Frosty Morning.
Published by Hannah Humphrey, May 9, 1808
Etching, hand-colored
Gillray depicts the Marquis of Stafford (later the 1st Duke of Sutherland),
a collector and patron of the arts (his collection of Titians, Raphaels,
and Poussins is now on loan to the National Gallery of Scotland), as
he approaches the exhibition rooms at Christie’s. Gillray suggests
that dealers and auction houses trade in superlatives and hyperbole as
much as art; the catalogue on display boasts that the current exhibition
features no fewer than 800 “Capital Pictures.” Stafford,
walking with a comical gait, was off to view art and enjoy his “morning
lounge.”
Christie’s was located from 1770 on Pall Mall, near the British
Institution for Promoting the Fine Arts in the United Kingdom. The British
Institution, founded in 1805 with royal approval, offered a venue for
the work of British artists to be exhibited side-by-side with Old Master
paintings borrowed from country-house collections.
131
CONNOISSEURS examining a collection of GEORGE MORLAND’S.
Published by Hannah Humphrey: November 16, 1807
Etching and aquatint with engraving, hand-colored
Gillray ridicules the popularity of George Morland’s sentimental
paintings of rustic life, and the pomposity of connoisseurship. Several
self-important critics study Gillray’s burlesques of Morland’s
potboilers, while Mr. Mortimer, a picture dealer and restorer, spits
on a painting of a pig to clean it. The connoisseur on the far left is
probably Captain Baillie, the collector and engraver who reprinted Rembrandt’s “Hundred
Guilder Print,” and then proceeded to cut the plate into four pieces
and print from the fragments.
132
DILETTANTI-THEATRICALS; – or – a Peep at the Green Room. – Vide.
Pic-Nic-Orgies.
Published by Hannah Humphrey: February 18, 1803
Etching and aquatint with engraving, hand-colored
The Pic-Nic Society, founded in 1802 by Lady Buckinghamshire (the former
Mrs. Hobart) and Lt. Col. Henry Francis Greville, was an association
of amateur thespians, who gathered for pot-luck suppers and “theatricals” – farces,
pantomimes, masquerades. Gillray shows the cast in the green room preparing
for their roles, for which, in most cases, they are ludicrously unsuitable.
Lady Buckinghamshire dominates the center as she liberally applies beauty
marks for her role as the jealous wife in The Rival Queens, or The
Death of Alexander the Great. Her immense girth contrasts with tiny Lord Mount-Edgecumbe,
who plays Alexander. In the foreground, the elegant Lady Salisbury, her
pose reminiscent of the partially dressed woman in the tavern scene from
Hogarth’s Rake’s Progress, shows off a shapely leg as she
readies for the part of “Squire Groom.” On the right, playwright
and fop Lumley Skeffington prances with Lord Kirkcudbright, and behind
them, the Prince of Wales dances with Mrs. Fitzherbert and Lady Jersey,
two of his mistresses. Gillray riddles his satire with double-entendres,
as Diana Donald points out, reinforcing his central theme of the Pic-Nics
as offering “unbounded sexual license.”
133
“Blowing up the PIC NIC’S; – or – Harlequin
Quixotte attacking the Puppets. Vide Tottenham Street Pantomine
Published by Hannah Humphrey: April 2, 1802
Etching and aquatint with engraving, hand-colored
Although the productions of the Pic-Nic Society were unwelcome competition
to professional actors and managers of licensed theaters (diverting the
support of their important patrons, the aristocracy), these essentially
harmless theatricals were also a rallying point for Tory Evangelicals
and the press, who launched relentless and virulent attacks against what
was perceived as upper-class decadence. Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Whig
politician, orator, and proprietor of the Drury Lane Theatre, charged
the Pic-Nics with “licentious and immoral behavior,” while
others were appalled by “orgies” led by “the unblushing
matrons of fashion.” Still other critics railed against the extravagance
of the productions, particularly their displays of lavish costumes and
jewelry.
Gillray joined in this campaign to present the aristocracy as unregenerate
and immoral. Here, Sheridan leads an attack on a performance of the Pic-Nics,
and waves a large feathered pen, inscribed with the names of newspapers
in which his diatribes against the Pic-Nics were published. He is reinforced
by Charles Kemble in his role as Hamlet, the hefty celebrated singer
Mrs. Billington, and the actress Mrs. Sarah Siddons, probably as Lady
Macbeth. The ghost of the great English actor David Garrick rises up
from the floorboards.
134
The Theatrical BUBBLE; – being a new specimen of the astonishing
Powers of the great Politico-Punchinello, in the Art of Dramatic-Puffing –
Published by Hannah Humphrey: January 7, 1805
Etching and aquatint with engraving, hand-colored
Gillray ridicules a contemporary fashion for juvenile performers. A
puffed-up Sheridan as Punch blows “theatrical” bubbles, the
largest containing the figure of William Henry Betty, the Young Roscius,
or Master Betty, whose youthful theatrical successes were a financial
salvation for Sheridan at his Drury Lane Theatre. A celebrity, he was
patronized by both the Prince and George III, who introduced him to the
Queen. Here he is cheered by an audience, which includes Fox (on the
right), standing behind the Duke of Clarence with his actress-mistress
Dorothy Jordan. Gillray took umbrage with Master Betty’s fans,
who were so numerous that troops had to be called to control the crowds.
135–136
HARMONY before MATRIMONY.
Published by Hannah Humphrey: October 25, 1805
Etching and engraving, hand-colored
MATRIMONIAL-HARMONICS.
Published by Hannah Humphrey: October 25, 1805
Etching and engraving, hand-colored
Gillray contrasts the harmony of courtship with the discord of marriage
in the guise of an amateur recital, a popular form of entertainment that
Gillray considered in several other satires. In Harmony Before Matrimony,
all is in rapturous accord: in an oval picture, Cupid takes aim at amorous
doves; cats gambol playfully; goldfish swim toward each other; even a
butterfly is attracted to his reflection in the mirror. The couple harmonize
in love duets, and between them on the table is a copy of Ovid’s
The Art of Love.
But marriage takes its toll. The wife now sings “forte” of “Torture – Fury – Rage – Despair – I
cannot can not bear,” and on the piano and the floor are other
songs in the recital, “Separation a Finale for Two Voices with
Accompaniment” and “The Wedding Ring A Dirge.” The
baby cries, while a cat hisses at a barking dog, and the lovebirds are
caught mid-squawk. Cupid sleeps on the mantelpiece, and the fire in the
fireplace can’t dull the domestic chill registering on the thermometer.
Ovid is replaced on the chair by “The Art of Tormenting.”
137
TALES of WONDER! This attempt to describe the effects of the Sublime & Wonderful,
is dedicated to M.G. Lewis Esqr. M.P.
Published by Hannah Humphrey: February 1, 1802
Etching and aquatint with engraving and roulette, hand-colored
Gothic horror stories became very popular at the end of the eighteenth
century, a reflection of a Romantic reaction in the arts against the
Age of Reason and the Enlightenment. Here, a fashionably dressed woman
reads aloud to her companions, who are riveted by M. G. (“Monk”)
Lewis’s blood-curdling tale The Monk (1796), the story of a monk
who, during the Spanish Inquisition, descends into depravity and sells
his soul to the devil. The décor is in keeping with the genre’s
penchant for torture chambers and dark medieval castles. The objets
d’art on the mantelpiece include a Gorgon, who looks alarmed; a skeleton intertwined
with a snake; and a dragon, while a relief over the fireplace shows Pluto
spiriting away Persephone. A painting on the wall offers up a scene of
rape and pillage, as a man in armor carries off a young woman. Violence,
eroticism, and evil directed against virtue were part of one variety
of the melodramatic mix that defined the popular Gothic novel.
138
Advantages of wearing Muslin Dresses! – dedicated to the serious
attention of the Fashionable Ladies of Great Britain.
Published by Hannah Humphrey: February 15, 1802
Etching with engraving and roulette, hand-colored
Muslin dresses were fashionable at this time, and the unfortunate events
Gillray depicts here were based on true-life stories. The framed picture
of the volcano, inspired no doubt by Hamilton’s studies of the
recent eruptions of Vesuvius and Aetna, echo the conflagration below.
139
A SPENCER & a THREAD-PAPER.
Published by Hannah Humphrey: May 17, 1792
Etching and aquatint, hand-colored
Gillray etched a number of satires on the eccentricities and excesses
of men’s and women’s fashionable clothing. The spencer was
a short double-breasted overcoat, named for George John Spencer, 2nd
Earl Spencer (probably the figure on the left), who, according to one
legend, wagered that he could start a fashion by trimming the skirts
of his overcoat (allegedly clipped during a riding accident). He is joined
by a gentleman wearing a long pleated coat, which Gillray compares to
a thread-paper, a pleated card used to divide skeins of thread. The term
came to describe a slender person.
140
The Fashionable Mamma, – or – The Convenience of Modern Dress.
Vide. The Pocket Hole, &c.
Published by Hannah Humphrey: February 15, 1796
Etching with engraving and roulette, hand-colored
Historian Diana Donald points out that Gillray wryly contrasts here
the fashion for “natural dress” and the mother’s unnatural
lack of interest in her nursing child. While the loose-fitting, draped
garment seems designed for breast-feeding, the mother’s attention
is elsewhere, as she readies herself to depart in the waiting carriage.
Mary Wollstonecraft and Hannah More had already observed, according to
Donald, that “a preoccupation with fashionable enjoyments alienated
upper-class women from their role as nursing mothers.”
Although the high-waisted dress was popularized in France during the
Directory and the Empire, M. Dorothy George observes that it “had
an independent and earlier origin in England.” In 1793, Lady Charlotte
Campbell had introduced the clinging high-waisted dress “imitating
the drapery of pictures and statues,” with the breasts lightly
covered or left bare. As part of the “look,” stomach pads
were placed beneath the bust, which could suggest nothing other than
pregnancy.
As historian Linda Colley has pointed out, the “cult of prolific
maternity was immensely attractive to those who believed … that
Britain’s population was in decline, and to those who simply wanted
more live births so that the nation might better compete in terms of
cannon-fodder with France.” Women were encouraged to breed and
breast-feed (rather than depend on wet-nurses), and legislators and charitable
organizations supported maternity hospitals. The motto of the Lying-in
Charity for Married Women significantly and succinctly stated: “Increase
of Children a Nation’s Strength.”
141
Hero’s recruiting at Kelsey’s; – or – Guard-Day
at St. James’s.
Published by Hannah Humphrey: June 9, 1797
Etching, hand-colored
According to historian Linda Colley, fear of a French invasion led to
the expansion of the civil defense force between 1797 and 1805. By the
early nineteenth century, one in four adult males in Britain was in uniform.
Gillray alludes here to the practice that allowed minors to purchase
military commissions and promotions. According to Draper Hill, this notorious
system led the Duke of York, as Commander-in-Chief, in March 1795 to
recall all captains under age twelve and all lieutenant-colonels under
twenty. Here, an army officer, identified as Captain Birch, entertains
a new recruit, so young his feet don’t touch the floor when he
perches on the chair. Both savor desserts served up at Kelsey’s,
a sweet shop run by Francis Kelsey on St. James’s Street. The year
this print was published, 1797, Hannah Humphrey, Gillray’s publisher,
landlady, and friend, moved her shop to St. James’s Street. Gillray
lived “over the shop” beginning in 1793, first on Old Bond
Street, then in 1794 at New Bond Street, and finally, in the attic at
27 St. James’s Street.
142
GERMANS EATING SOUR-KROUT.
Published by Hannah Humphrey: May 7, 1803
Etching and engraving, hand-colored
Gillray shows five Germans dining at “The Sun and Thirteen Cantons,” an
inn in Leicester Square established by a Viennese, Edward Weyler, and
run, at the time of this print, by Susannah Weyler. The menu suggests
that every course featured sauerkraut, and even a dog and a cat join
in the feast. Gillray compares the gluttonous group with, in the background,
a picture of pigs lined up at a trough.
Gillray may also be alluding here to an underlying strong tie between
England and Germany. In 1714, in an effort to secure a Protestant Succession,
Parliament passed over numerous Catholics in line to the throne, and
instead offered the monarchy to George Ludwig of Hanover. Though he had
only a smattering of English, George I came with Lutheran credentials.
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