Tag Archives: Crowds

The South Sea scheme

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“Satire on the financial scandal of the South Sea Bubble; a composite scene in the City of London identified by the Guildhall, St Paul’s Cathedral and the Monument (its inscription changed to record the destruction of the city by the South Sea); a crowd is gathered around a merry-go-round (on which ride a prostitute, a clergyman, a shoe-black, an old crone and a Scottish nobleman); to left, the Devil hacks the limbs of Fortune, while religious leaders (both Anglican and Jewish) play at pitch and hustle; to right, emblematic figures of Honour and Honesty are beaten by Self-Interest and Villainy, and Trade sleeps.”–British Museum online catalogue

  • Title: The South Sea scheme
  • Creator: Hogarth, William, 1697-1764, printmaker
  • Published: London, 1751

Catalog Record

Hogarth 751.12.10.01+ Box 200

Acquired October 2024

The pit door

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“A struggling crowd, partly within and partly without the pit door, a spiked gateway, of Drury Lane Theatre. Men, respectably dressed but of plebeian appearance, stand in the foreground on the outskirts of the crowd or fight their way in, some with sticks. There are a few women; one who has fainted but is in an erect position owing to the crowd, is being revived with smelling-salts. A man is vomiting. In the foreground two lady’s hats, the ribbons partly torn off, lie on the ground with shoes and the broken fragments of a shoe-buckle. In the background two ladies and a man are passing through a narrow door into the theatre itself; through the doorway is seen a section of an upper gallery and boxes below it, both crowded. On the exterior wall, above the heads of the crowd, is a playbill …”–British Museum online catalogue, description of the related print

  • Title: The pit door
  • Creator: Dighton, Robert, 1752-1814, artist
  • Published: England, approximately 1784

Catalog Record

Drawings D574 no. 12 Box D205

Acquired October 2024

The Wimbledon hoax!, or, Waterloo review!!!!!!

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Preliminary drawings on front and back for a print, “The Wimbledon hoax!, or, Waterloo review!!!!!!”, etched by Cruikshank and published by James Johnson 10 June 1816, with the design reversed. Holiday-making familiese of ‘cits’ drive, ride, and walk in the park

  • Title: The Wimbledon hoax!, or, Waterloo review!!!!!!
  • Creator: Cruikshank, George, 1792-1878, artist
  • Published: England, approximately 1816

Catalog record

Drawings C889 no. 11 Box D300

Acquired August 2024

The M.P. marching at the head of his 300 jontlemen!!!

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“O’Connell (unrecognizable) marches jauntily to a door on the extreme right, over which is a board inscribed ‘St Ste[phens] To Trespassers Men-Traps–Constantly Set–Beware’; he is followed by an Irish mob, yelling and flourishing shillelaghs. He wears barrister’s wig and gown with a mitre-shaped cap decorated with a cross, shamrock, and bells (emblem of folly). Under his right arm is a large book inscribed ‘1 & 2’; his left hand rests on a stout stick. His gown is held up by a ragamuffin and the procession is headed by a bloated priest who holds up on a bludgeon a placard: ‘Unconditional Emancipation O C For Ever’; this is surmounted with shamrock. The crowd are evidently from St. Giles and similar Irish slums in London; two carry hods, emblem of the Irish builder’s labourer or hodman. On the extreme left in the foreground is an Irish basket-woman, holding her basket, smoking a short pipe; she shouts ‘Stop wid ye now–are ye goin to lave the ladies behind–ye blackguards.’ She is barefooted, very ragged, and wears a soldier’s jacket (cf. British Museum Satires No. 15721). See British Museum Satires No. 15759, &c.”–British Museum online catalogue.

  • Printmaker: Heath, William, 1795-1840, printmaker.
  • Title: The M.P. marching at the head of his 300 jontlemen!!! [graphic] / [man with umbrella] Esqr.
  • Publication: [London] : Pub. by T. McLean, 26 Haymarket …, [May 1829?]

Catalog Record

829.05.00.11+

Acquired June 2024

Hudibras vanquish’d and protected by Trulla

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A copy (cropped) of Hogarth’s fifth plate: Hudibras is sprawled on the ground with Trulla, a large country-woman, astride him fending off angry villagers, including a cobbler and a butcher who are wielding clubs; to the left, Ralpho is flanked by a man with a rope (mostly cropped from this image) and another who holds a sword.

  • Title: Hudibras vanquish’d and protected by Trulla [graphic] : P. 1. Cant: 3. l. 929.
  • Publication: [London] : [Robert Sayer], [between 1768 and 1794]

Catalog Record

Folio 75 H67 768B

Acquired January 2021

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

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

A country inn yard at the time of an election

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“Copy of scene in the “Old Angle In”, an inn with the sign of an angel that gives the proprietor as ‘Toms. Bates’, and a stop for coaches on the road to London; in foreground a large woman enters a coach, the man to her left helps her in with a hand on her round backside, a man with a protruding belly stands waiting, behind him a boy holds out a hat for tips; to the left a refreshment seller yells out advertising her goods, two drunken guests lean out from a window above with a pipe and a horn, and two figures embrace in the doorway below, the watchdog lies asleep in his kennel on the right; a crowd of election campaigners at the far end of the inn.”–British Museum online catalogue.

  • Title: A country inn yard at the time of an election [graphic] / invented & painted by Wm. Hogarth.
  • Publication: [London?] : [publisher not identified], [between 1747 and 1800]

Catalog Record

Hogarth 747.00.00.01 Box 105

Acquired January 2021

Arrival of the flotilla of Admiral Howe

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description belowUnsigned; attributed to Rowlandson.
Inscribed on verso: Names of the Ships taken by Lord Howe on 1st of June 1794, and brought into Portsmouth Harbour; Sans Pareille 84 Guns, L’America 74, Limpetue 84, Northumberland 84, Achille 76, La Vengeur 74.

 

  • Artist: Rowlandson, Thomas, 1756-1827, artist.
  • Title: [Arrival of the flotilla of Admiral Howe into Portsmouth Harbour on 1 June 1794] [art original].
  • Production: [England], [1794]

Catalog Record

Drawings R79 no. 17 Box 2

Acquired August 2020

The Sunday school children of Colchester

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A view of the grounds of the Castle Park in Colchester (Essex) with tents erected for the celebration of the anniversary of the Sunday school. The tents, along the left side accommodate a series of booths, each equipped to feed the children in orderly queues. Against a background of trees along the perimeter of the lawns are groups of people strolling, walking dogs, or sitting with their own picnic baskets; they are apparently of the middle or better classes (judging by their clothes) looking on their objects of charity?

 

  • Title: The Sunday school children of Colchester [graphic] : at their anniversary dinner in the Castle bailey.
  • Publication: [Colchester, England] : Published October 1t, 1797, by I. Marsden, Colchester, [1 October 1797]

Catalog Record

797.10.01.01+

Acquired August 2020