Tag Archives: Signs (notices)

Perspective view of the outside of the Royal Exchange in London

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“Exterior view of the Royal Exchange; looking down a busy street with carriages, carts and pedestrians, St Paul’s Cathedral in the distance to the left, the prominent entrance of the Royal Exchange with tower to right; in right foreground a man enters a shop with the sign “John’s Coffee”; after Loutherbourg and Chapman; published etched state.”–British Museum online catalogue.

  • Printmaker: Bartolozzi, Francesco, 1727-1815, printmaker.
  • Title: To the Right Honorable William Pitt, first Lord Commissioner of the Treasury, Principal Secretary of State, and Chancellor of the Exchequer, this accurate perspective view of the outside of the Royal Exchange in London is (by permission) humbly dedicated by his most grateful, obedient, and most obliged humble servant, J. Chapman [graphic] / the delineation by Mr. Chapman, the figures by Lutherburgh, the graving of the plates by Bartolozzi.
  • Publication: [London] : Published as the act directs August 12, 1788, & sold by Mr. Chapman at Mr. Christie’s, Pall Mall, [12 August 1788]

Catalog Record

788.08.12.01++

Acquired April 2023

Always a character

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A caricatured portrait of comedian John Liston, standing before the Theatre Royal. Leaning against a bollard is a placard advertising the play ‘Fish out of Water’ in which he was starring as ‘Sam Savoury’.

  • Printmaker: Ash, William, active 1823, printmaker, artist.
  • Title: Always a character [graphic] / Wm. Ash invt. & fet.
  • Publication: [London] : Pubd. Novr. 25th, 1823, by G. Humphrey, 24, St. James’s St. & 74, New-Bond St., London, [25 November 1823]

Catalog Record

823.11.25.01

Acquired April 2023

The slough of despond

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“Wardle, in back view in civilian dress, walks off with Mrs. Clarke seated on his right shoulder; a paper, ‘C. Wardle’, projects from his pocket. She looks back to point derisively down at the Duke of York who is falling into a watery swamp. She says: “There goes his —— Honor!!” He shakes his fist at the couple. Beside him are his cocked hat and a broken sword inscribed ‘from Holland’. Wardle walks uphill towards the temple of ‘Truth’; a (naked) figure holds out draperies. In the swamp is a board: ‘A Caution’.”–British Museum online catalogue.

  • Title: The slough of despond [graphic] / etchd. by I Spy I.
  • Publication: [London] : [publisher not identified], [ca. March 1809]

Catalog Record

809.03.00.06+

Acquired May 2021

 

The old proprietors advice

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“Prince Leopold (right), in uniform, puts his head through a glassless aperture in a window in the door of his ‘Grecian Establish[ment]–Co[burg]’, to look intently at a fat Turk who stands in profile to the right, elaborately dressed and holding a long pipe with smoking bowl. The door, partly cut off by the right margin, is flanked by a Corinthian pillar and set in a wall on which are placards: ‘This . Shop!!! will shortly open under entire new Management–Vivant [sic] Rex’; a Union Jack poster (partly covered); the Russian eagle, and a fleur-de-lis, the two last inscribed ‘Loan’. The Turk: ‘What have you taken the Shop? well if you take my advice you will not give Your Customers too much Credit for I can tell you they are a queer set to deal with by the bye they nearly ruined me–and mind that you look sharp after your Shopmen’.”–British Museum online catalogue.

  • Printmaker: Heath, William, 1795-1840, printmaker.
  • Title: The old proprietors advice [graphic] / William Heath.
  • Publication: [London] : Pub. April 10, 1830, by T. McLean, 26 Haymarket, [10 April 1830]

Catalog Record

830.04.10.01+

Acquired November 2020

Morning

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An old woman, the prude, is standing near a crowd of people huddled around a bonfire in Covent Garden. She is crossing Covent Garden Piazza, disapproving of the amorous scenes outside the notorious Tom King’s Coffee House. The print shows the morning and is part of a series representing the progress of the day.

  • Printmaker: Cook, Thomas, approximately 1744-1818, printmaker.
  • Title: Morning [graphic] / designed by Wm. Hogarth ; engraved by T. Cook.
  • Publication: [London] : Published August the 1st, 1797, by G.G. & J. Robinson, Pater-noster Row, London, [1 August 1797]

Catalog Record

Hogarth 797.08.01.01++ Box 310

Acquired January 2021

Evening

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The third print in the series “Four Times of the Day” is set at Sadler’s Wells. “A dyer and his wife walking with their dog beside the New River; the wife holds a fan with a design of Aphrodite and Adonis, the husband carries a small child, a somewhat older boy stands behind them in tears because his sister is demanding the gingerbread figure he holds; behind them is a young woman holding a shoe and a cow being milked by another woman; to the right is a tavern with the sign of Sir Hugh Middleton’s Head, two women and a man are in the tavern garden, other figures are visible through the window, and a grape vine is climbing up towards the roof.”–British Museum online catalogue.

  • Printmaker: Cook, Thomas, approximately 1744-1818, printmaker.
  • Title: Evening [graphic] / designed by Wm. Hogarth ; engraved by T. Cook.
  • Publication: [London] : Published December the 1st, 1797, by G.G. & J. Robinson, Pater-noster Row, London, [1 December 1797]

Catalog Record

Hogarth 797.12.01.01++ Box 310

Acquired January 2021

Noon

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A copy of the second print in William Hogarth’s series “Four Times of the Day”: Set outside St Giles’s-in-the-Fields. On the right an elegant crowd leaves the French Huguenot church; they are dressed in the height of French fashion. Two women kiss on the far right in the customary French way. They are contrasted with Londoners on the left. The two groups are separated by a gutter down the middle of the road; a dead cat lies in the gutter foreground. The Londoners stand outside a tavern with the sign of the Good Woman (one without a head); a woman and man in the second-storey window look surprised as the contents of her bowl are tossed out the window. In the foreground, left, under a sign with John the Baptist’s head on a platter and reading “Good Eating”, a black man embraces a servant girl and a small boy (evidently intended by his curly red hair to be identified as one of the Irish inhabitants of the area) cries because he has broken a pie-dish. A little girl squats as she eats the fallen pie off the ground. The clock in the steeple in the background reads 12:30.

  • Printmaker: Cook, Thomas, approximately 1744-1818, printmaker.
  • Title: Noon [graphic] / designed by Wm. Hogarth ; engraved by T. Cook.
  • Publication: [London] : Published October the 1st, 1797, by G.G. & J. Robinson, Pater-noster Row, London, [1 October 1797]

Catalog Record

Hogarth 797.10.01.03++ Box 310

Acquired January 2021

Night

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A copy of the fourth print in William Hogarth’s series “Four Times of the Day”, set at the intersection of Rummer Court and Charing Cross. Le Sueur’s equestrian statue of Charles I can be seen in the background. It is the anniversary of the Restoration of Charles II (29 May, known as “Oak Apple Day”). In the foreground a drunken freemason (probably the corrupt magistrate Sir Thomas De Veil) is supported by a serving man. Behind them a man pours gin into a keg. To the left a barber is seen at work through a window; each pane of the shop window contains a lit candle. From a window above the barber shop, a chamber pot is being emptied onto the top of a wooden shelter under which a man and woman sleep. Beside them, a link boy crouches as he blows on the flame of his torch. Behind and to the right of the freemason, the Salisbury Flying Coach has crashed and overturned while trying to avoid a bonfire in the middle of the street; the passengers reach out the window of the coach, alarmed looks on their faces.Two men look on, one of whom appears to be a butcher. Shop and tavern signs include the barber’s which is decorated with oak leaves and advertises “Shaving Bleeding & Teeth Drawn wth. a Touch Ecce Signum”; the Rummer Tavern; the Earl of Cardigan; and, the Bagnio and the New Bagnio.

  • Printmaker: Cook, Thomas, approximately 1744-1818, printmaker.
  • Title: Night [graphic] / designed by Wm. Hogarth ; engraved by T. Cook.
  • Published: [London] : Published February the 1.st 1798 by G.G. & J. Robinson Pater-noster Row London, [1 February 1798]

Catalog Record

Hogarth 798.02.01.01++ Box 310

Acquired January 2021

A harlot’s progress. Plate I

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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

Simptoms of courage!

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“British troops are about to march through a large fortified gate leading from open country (left) to the town of Buenos Ayres, where confused street-fighting is in progress. Can are fired from the battlements of the gate at the soldiers, some of whom lie dead or wounded. In the foreground an officer (mounted), in conversation with others, asks: “where is the General”; others say: “go look for the General”; “Find the General”; “why the General is lost”. A Highland officer, taking snuff (right), slyly; “I dare say he is varra safe.” From the country (left) three mounted men gallop, all saying, “I come for Orders”. In the background Whitelocke’s head and shoulders are seen peeping over a hillock on the extreme left. He says: “He that fights and runs away, May live to fight another day, But he thats in the Battle slain, Will never live to fight again”. In the distance, behind him, are tiny (British) soldiers in close formation. In the city men are firing and hurling stones from the roofs of flat-roofed houses on British soldiers in the plaza. On the wall (right) is a placard: ‘Lost, or Mis-led a General officer Who ever can [give] Information … ampl[y] rewarded.'”–British Museum online catalogue.

  • Printmaker: Cruikshank, Isaac, 1756?-1811?, printmaker.
  • Title: Simptoms of courage! [graphic] / G. Whiteliver del.
  • Publication: [London] : Pub. by S.W. Fores, No. 50 Piccadilly, March 26, 1808.

Catalog Record

808.03.26.01+

Acquired June 2019