An old woman in patched-up clothes with her harp huddles in a doorway. The satire contrasts the life of a street singer with the sweet lyrics of the popular ballad by Thomas Moore.
829.00.00.117+
Acquired April 2023
“Young woman dressed in her ballgown half-reclines on a settee in her bedroom while her elderly maid yawns with tiredness.”–British Museum online catalogue.
829.00.00.118+
Acquired May 2023
A grotesque racist caricature of a buxom black woman in a white dress decorated with flowers and a bonnet with ribbons, grinning at the viewer and saying ‘Don’t you think you Fancy me now Massa’. Probably inspired by the “High Life in Philadelphia” series by Edward Williams Clay between 1828 and 1830 mocking supposed racial differences and modeled after George and Robert Cruikshank’s Life in London.
830.00.00.163
Acquired February 2022
“The Duke (left) and Duchess of St. Albans stand facing each other; the little Duke staggering under an ornamental basket which supports a side of bacon, inscribed Best Wiltshire. The Duchess holds on her shoulder a cutter in which are seated six oarsmen with oars held erect, and a helmsman. The Duke is dressed as Grand Falconer (see British Museum Satires No. 15596) and wears a hood with bells indicating both a fool’s cap and the hood and bells of falconry. Two speeches float from his head: [1] “In love connubial, formed to live and last, This gift records a blissful twelvemonth past We claim, then boldly claim the flitch Dunmow First of the blest, who keep the marriag Vow”. [2] I thought the flitch to small a present on this auspicious day so I have brought the Gammon with it Love. The Duchess answers: Thanks for your Bacon Duke well have you Saved it – and in return accept of this small Testimony of my affection. She wears Court dress, coronet, and feathers. The boatmen wear yellow and green liveries, and on the prow is a falcon’s head; the back of the seat in the stern is decorated with a falcon perched on a melon resting on a heap of sovereigns. In the foreground are spectators: on the left the Dukes of Cumberland (wearing his hat) and Sussex stand together with Prince Leopold behind them; on the right is Sir Francis Burdett (son-in-law of Coutts), very thin, surprised, and displeased. In the background are other spectators, their heads concealed by the boat, and on the right a group of singers, some in Tyrolean costume, with (?) Braham and Miss Stephens; they sing: a boat a boat.”–British Museum online catalogue.
828.00.00.115+
Acquire June 2020
“The King’s giraffe hangs limply from a sling which is suspended from a cross-beam supported on two uprights. George IV and Lady Conyngham push hard at a windlass to hoist up their pet. He has thrown off his coat and rolled up his shirt-sleeves; tight breeches define spherical posteriors. She looks up sentimentally at the animal, whose forelegs are swathed in stockings, with the feet in large shoes stamped with a crown. Beside it is an open chest of stoppered spirit bottles. A background of trees and grass indicates Windsor Park.”–British Museum online catalogue.
829.07.00.05+
January 2020
“George IV as the ‘Great Babe’ lies asleep in his cradle rocked by Lady Conyngham, while Wellington, seated before a pier-glass, places the crown on his own head. The glass reflects the dark emaciated features of British Museum Satires No. 15520. The Duke wears uniform with boots and sword. On a table below the glass the sceptre and orb lie on a cushion. Lady Conyngham, with a towering coiffure as in British Museum Satires No. 15508, croons: Oh slumber my darling | The time may soon come | When thy rest may be broken | By Trumpet & Drum [the last three words in large letters]. The infant sucks a thumb; a gouty foot projects from the coverlet. On the floor is a line of toys: a sailing boat on wheels, a model of Buckingham Palace reconstructed by Nash as in British Museum Satires No. 15668, a giraffe (see British Museum Satires No. 15425), a Life Guard on a toy horse, a Foot-Guard, a dismantled or unfinished ship resting on a prostrate toy soldier. A napkin on a towel-horse (right) indicates a nursery.”–British Museum online catalogue.
828.02.00.05+
Acquired June 2020
“Lady Conyngham stands directed to the left, feet apart, dressed as in British Museum satires no. 15720; she amusingly combines the ultra-feminine with masculine attributes and stance. She is immensely fat and wide with small cherubic features and curls; under her left arm is a cocked blunderbuss. She wears a wide-brimmed hat, a neckcloth fastened with a jewelled crown, a coach-guard’s greatcoat, wide open over her tight-waisted dress. A pouch hangs from her shoulder and two coach-horns from her left arm. Above her head: ‘I says to our Governor says I–keep your eye on them ere Leaders George’; i.e. on Lyndhurst and Scarlett, see British Museum satires nos. 15720, 15850. Cf. British Museum satires no. 15716.”–British Museum online catalogue.
829.04.28.01+
Acquired November 2019
“An ancient Gothic church in the middle distance stands on a grassy hill inscribed ‘Protestant Ascendency’; under the hill (left) is a cave, ‘Cave of Catholic Ascendency’, in which are barrels of ‘Gun . Pow[der]’. A fat bare-footed friar walks away from the cave towards the picture-plane, carrying a lighted candle, and slyly laying a train of powder on the road to the cave. Standing round the church is a crowd of country people, listening to a parson who holds out to them a ‘Petition to Parliament’. They are unconscious, not only that the ground beneath them is mined, but that men (right) are tugging at a rope looped round the steeple, which is about to crash. The rope-pullers are in the foreground (right); at the extreme end is Wellington with his back to the church, straining hard. Next is Peel, wearing an orange waistcoat (cf. British Museum Satires No. 15690) badly stained by the rope; Brougham, a broom-girl dressed as in British Museum Satires No. 14769, is next, with Mackintosh in Highland costume beside him. In front of them is Burdett, very tall and thin, holding up his hat and shouting ‘Down with it–never mind the People’ [see British Museum Satires No. 16058]. In front is O’Connell, in wig and gown, shouting, ‘By St Patrick I’ve got the Rope over at Last.’ Behind these principals are more men, tugging at a second rope. On a green field topping a cliff behind the church-breakers is Eldon wearing a smock and guiding a plough; he turns to shout to the petitioners by the church, who will be crushed by the falling tower: ‘Look to your selves People.’ Along the horizon (left) is a Papist procession with lighted tapers, the Host, crosses, a grotesque Pope, and figures under a canopy. It approaches St. Paul’s whose dome rises above the sky-line. On the extreme right is the Monument (see British Museum satires no. 15688, &c.) in flames.”–British Museum online catalogue.
829.03.19.01+
Acquired October 2018
“The Duchess of St. Albans, immensely fat, florid, and bejewelled, and a stout elderly naval officer wearing loose wide trousers, and apparently doing hornpipe steps, his hands on his hips, dance side by side with rollicking abandon. The others of the set: one man and two ladies on the left and one lady and two men on the right dance rigidly erect, and watch the central pair with hauteur; the men are dandies, the women slim and fashionable. The duchess has a swirling paradise-plume in her towering loops of hair, above tossing ringlets.”–British Museum online catalogue.
829.05.00.08+
Acquired October 2018
“A Thames wherry passes close to the wall of a riverside tavern, and is about to go under a high timber bridge. The two oarsmen have immense artificial-looking whiskers and curled hair, cf. British Museum satires no. 15962, no hats, and wear striped shirts, open at the neck, nautical in cut. They row a lady who sits erect in a grotesquely huge hat, with wide brim, high jam-pot crown, and towering ribbons. They row badly and carelessly. In waterside arbours spectators drink and smoke. On the extreme left steps lead to the water, and two more amateur oarsmen, looking like buccaneers, stand, while a boatman in waders holds the bow of a boat. Behind are urban houses.”–British Museum online catalogue.
829.00.00.113+
Acquired October 2018