A French emigrant cook begging for a slice of English beef

description below

A scene in a kitchen showing a French male cook on his knees beside a cross-looking female cook holding a spatula. In the background, a roaring fire in the hearth with a slab of beef on a spit.

  • Printmaker: Cruikshank, Isaac, 1764-1811, printmaker, artist.
  • Title: A French emigrant cook begging for a slice of English beef [graphic].
  • Publication: [London] : Publish’d 1st March 1794 by Robt. Sayer & Co., Fleet Street, London, [1 March 1794]

Catalog Record

794.03.01.04

Acquired September 2023

A catalogue of the kitchin furniture of John Bull Esqr.

lwlpr34628 (1024x813)

“Satire on Bute’s alleged sale of public positions paralleled with Earl Talbot’s introduction of economies into the royal household. An auction is taking place in a large kitchen where, in the centre, Talbot, Lord Steward of the Household, instructs the auctioneer’s clerk at a table beneath the podium. On the left, three cooks, one a Frenchman planning to leave for Calais to work for “Monsr. Grandsire”, are mocked by a Scot for not being able to make haggis; another cook brandishing a gridiron and two ladles stands in front of the fireplace in which stands only a cracked pot filled with thistles. On the right, a poor man plans to bid for “old rags or broken glass”, and a stout middle-class woman plans to purchase a ladle to beat her husband, while Princess Augusta and Lord Bute converse intimately; the Princess points suggestively to a large pot resting with other utensils on the floor. In the background, a chaplain laments the lack both “of victuals and of grace”.”–British Museum online catalogue.

  • TitleA catalogue of the kitchin furniture of John Bull Esqr. leaving of house-keeping now selling by auction [graphic].
  • Publication[London : Publish’d according to act of Parliament by J. Williams, next the Mitre Tavern, Fleet Street, 1762]

Catalog Record & Digital Collection

762.00.00.153

Acquired April 2016