Changing horses at Clermont

description below

A single-horse carriage is stopped in front of a rustic inn or roadhouse, with two caricatured Frenchmen (one a postillion wearing enormous boots) engaged in changing out the horse. An occupant of the carriage hands money out the window to a peasant woman holding an infant and accompanied by a young boy; two other shabbily dressed figures are nearby next to a tree, one of them playing a makeshift drum. In the doorway of the building stands a young woman, and to the left a man under an archway stands with arms crossed; both watch the scene unfold. In the background a postilion rides away on horseback, whip extended into the air.

  • Artist: Byron, Frederick George, 1764-1792, artist.
  • Title: [Changing horses at Clermont] [art original] / F.G. Byron.
  • Production: [France], [1790]

Catalog Record

Drawer Drawings B995 no. 1

Acquired June 2023

Taking a fly

description below

A scene beside a river: In the foreground two men who had been fishing have been pulled into the river by the rope attached to a ferry that is crossing to the other side when the horse that is pulling it bolts down stream. A third man is about to fall into the water as well as a fourth companion chases the runaway horse and his owner.

  • Title: Taking a fly [graphic].
  • Publication: London : Published by Thos. McLean, 26 Haymarket, [1824?]

Catalog Record

824.00.00.11 Impression 2

Acquired July 2020

Sailors conversing on horseback

description below

“Social satire; two sailors on horseback, one with a pipe in his hatband on a small white horse with a spotted handkerchief on a stick attached to its bridle, the other smoking a pipe on a large brown horse; they ask each other how their journeys on their horses have been, using language associated with ships, for example: “endeavouring to double the point at Mile-end she fell foul of a dray, and smack she lay me keel upermost in a stinking ditch … I hoisted my pocket handkerchief on her topmast as a sign of distress, which was seen by some comrades at anchor in the moorings. …”.”–British Museum online catalogue.

 

  • Printmaker: Roberts, Piercy, active 1791-1805, printmaker.
  • Title: Sailors conversing on horseback [graphic] / Woodward del. ; etch’d by Roberts.
  • Publication: London : Pubd. by P. Roberts, 28 Middle-row, Holborn, [ca. 1803]

Catalog Record

803.00.00.52+

Acquired September 2020

Riding apparatus for timid horsemen

description below

An older gentleman is on horseback strapped into a contraption that limits the horses movement (as such, it won’t move above a trot pace), limits any jolting movements and also provides shade and cover through the attachment of an umbrella. In the left background, a horseman struggles to control his horse as a panicked lady watches on and his top hat flies off behind him. To the right a male onlooker peers through his monocle in awe of the timid horsemen’s contraption.

 

  • Title: Riding apparatus for timid horsemen [graphic].
  • Publication: London : Pubd. by T. McLean, 26 Haymarket, Jan. 1, 1830.
  • Manufacture: [London] : Printed by J. Netherclift.

Catalog Record

830.01.01.09+

Acquired November 2020

The British farmer’s cyclopaedia

  • Author: Potts, Thomas, 1778-1842.
  • Title: The British farmer’s cyclopaedia, or, Complete agricultural dictionary … / Embellished with forty-two engravings.
  • Publication: London : Printed by W. Flint for Scatcherd and Letterman, Ave-maria-Lane, and M. Jones, No. 1 Paternoster-Row, 1807.

Catalog Record

69 807 P871

Acquired June 2020

 

A harlot’s progress. Plate I

description belowA copy in reverse of William Hogarth’s Plate 1 of A harlot’s progress: A scene outside the Bell Inn: a country girl, Moll Hackabout, having just arrived on the York Wagon (seen on the right), meets an extravagantly dressed bawd (Mother Needham); a clergyman on horseback fails to notice the encounter, but a lecherous old gentleman (Colonel Charteris) eyes the girl with anticipation. In the lower left the girl’s initials “H.M.” (M[ary?] Hackabout, initials reversed on this copy) are on her portmanteau, next to which is a basket with a goose with a note around its neck, “For my Loving Cosen in Tems Stret in London”, presumably the person who has failed to meet her. In the background a woman hangs out her laundry on a balcony. A clergyman on horseback fails to notice the encounter as his horse feeds on hay next to the wagon. In the back of the wagon, four other country girls sit holding onto a rail.

  • Title: A harlot’s progress. Plate I [graphic] : Innocence betrayed, or The journey to London = L’innocence trahie, ou, Le voyage de Londres / invented & painted by Wm. Hogarth.
  • Publication: [London] : [publisher not identified], [not before 25 March 1768]

Catalog Record

Hogarth 768.03.25.09+ Box 210

Acquired December 2019

A riding-house

description belowA view of the interior of a riding-school: A number of men riding round in a circle; those in the foreground ride from right to left, those in the background from left to right. The riding-master stands in the centre, pointing with hand and cane, and grinning at a short fat man in a clerical wig who is running across the room, alarmed at the horses. A short obese man in back-view on the extreme right, who is about to mount his horse has been identified as Captain Grose. Next him is a man with a grotesque impression of alarm riding a plunging horse. Among the riders are two with clerical wigs. One horse is galloping, out of control, the others are quietly ambling round. Two sides of a high rectangular room or hall are visible; in each wall are two high arch-topped windows.

  • Printmaker: Bretherton, James, approximately 1730-1806, printmaker.
  • Title: A riding-house [graphic] / Mr. Bunbury del. ; Js. Bretherton f.
  • Publication: [London] : Published by Js. Bretherton, 15 Feby. 1780.

Catalog Record

780.02.15.03++

Acquired November 2019

Series of very spirited etchings of gigs and their drivers

  • Creator: Alken, Henry Thomas, 1784-1851.
  • Title: Series of very spirited etchings of gigs and their drivers / by Alken.
  • Published:[ London] : [publisher not identified], [182-]

Catalog Record 

Quarto 724 820Al

Acquired April 2019

A perspective view and section of an engine propos’d to be built

A perspective view and section of an engine propos'd to be built . Detailed description below

“This engraving represents a circular building, with conical roof of tiles, shown in two sections, and partly in perspective. Within the building is a large wheel turned by a horse and giving motion to a considerable number of spindles, to which are attached disks; on each of the disks are several razors, which are thus set in action on the faces of the men who apply their cheeks to openings in the inner wall of the building. Exterior to this inner wall is a gallery where stand the men who are thus expeditiously shaved; their hats hang on pegs, each over the hole to which the owner has applied himself. In the gallery several men are finishing or preparing for their toilettes. The operation of dressing a wig is shown below the wheel, on our right, where many combs are placed on a drum which revolves like a water-wheel before a man’s wig, placed on a block near it.”–British Museum catalogue, description of an earlier state.

  • Printmaker: Booth, Thomas, active 1743-1746, printmaker.
  • Title: A perspective view and section of an engine propos’d to be built by subscription, which will shave sixty men in a minute, also oyl comb and powder their wigs [graphic] / Booth sculp.
  • Publication: [London] : Publish’d according to act of Parliament Novr. [the] 2, 1749, and sold by J. Dubois at [the] Golden Head [the] corner of Burleigh Street near Exeter Chanc[…], [2 November 1749]

Catalog Record 

749.11.29.01+

Acquired November 2018

Over weight, or, The sinking fund, or, The downfall of faro

“Lady Buckinghamshire, enormously fat, is seated in profile to the right in an open chariot which sinks through a rectangular aperture in front of the Weigh-House, its weight being too great for the apparatus for weighing wagons. She throws up her arms and one leg, dropping her whip and reins. The hind legs of the plunging horses are in the pit; they snort wildly; the chariot and horses resemble those of Phaeton burlesqued. On the chariot is an oval escutcheon with four quarterings (cards, dice, wine-bottle, and glass) and the letter ‘B’. On the right (behind) are two street-lamps on tall pyramidal posts.”–British Museum online catalogue.

  • PrintmakerNewton, Richard, 1777-1798, printmaker, artist.
  • TitleOver weight, or, The sinking fund, or, The downfall of faro [graphic] / Rd. Newton del. et fecit.
  • PublicationLondon : Pubd. by S.W. Fores, corner of Sackville Street, March 14, 1797.

Catalog Record and Digital Collection

797.03.14.01+

Acquired November 2016