Interior view of Neptune’s Grotto, the stalactite cave near Alghero on Sardinia that was discovered by fisherman in the eighteenth century and became a popular tourist site.
829.00.00.116
Acquired September 2022
A group of lithographs, handbills and broadsides relating to Christopher Herbert Simpson at Vauxhall Gardens, one of the leading venues for public entertainment in London for two centuries. The collection covers the latter half of his career, and his legacy after his death in 1835.
Title: Collection of lithographs and printed ephemera relating to Charles Herbert Simpson, 1831-1842
File 53 Si613 830
Acquired July 2022
“Cavalry in battle; a mounted soldier shooting a man off his horse in foreground, a fallen horse and rider at his feet; battle raging in background, a tower to the right, and in distance on left a bridge.”–British Museum online catalogue
810.00.00.84
Acquired April 2022
“Copy of a man with shaven head (James Figg) in casual dress, holding quarter-staff in his right hand and round-brimmed hat in the left, standing whole length to front in a landscape, with head tilted to right, glancing towards the viewer, smiling with lips parted; after a painting by Hogarth in a private collection.”–British Museum online catalogue.
842.00.00.07+
Acquired December 2021
Grey stands in the center pulling back a curtain on the large painting (right) addressing the three men (probably Peel, Cumberland, and Wellington) who look on in amazement. Grey says, “Gentlemen this is a fine color’d picture representing Futurity. The idea of which was concieved [sic] by an injured people and painted by a new and promising artist. Reform.” Reading from the left Peel looks at himself in the painting seated in a chair at a loom, “Why if there a’nt me at a spinning Jenny.” Cumberland, hat flying off, looking at himself depicted in the painting on his backside, “And me dying on a dunghill.” And Wellington closest to the painting that depicts him as a wounded soldier holding a broom and begging with his cap in hand, observes “And me begging.” In the painting is a tower with the British and French flags the former with the year 1814, referencing the Wellington’s successful campaign to end the Peninsular War.
831.05.00.02+
Acquired March 2022
Two men stand on the sidewalk under a street lamp, one of whom is a dustman with a pipe sticking out of his cap who asks the other, a large tradesman in an apron about his emaciated, muzzled dog. The dialogue below the title reads: I say Joe, what makes you Muzzle Brutus? Vy he’s such a beggar for grub, he’d spile his shape in 5 minnits if it was off, and he only got sight of a butcher’s shop
833.00.00.17+
Acquired February 2022
“A cricket-match. The King (left), who is nearest the picture-plane and larger in scale than the others, has just bowled, with arms flung wide, a huge ball inscribed ‘Reform’, hitting the batsman, Wellington, in the stomach and knocking him against the stumps. Grey fields near the King, exclaiming, ‘Hu.a he’s Out’; the King: ‘Aye and with a Ground hopper too’. Farther off (left to right) are Burdett (in top-boots), Lord John Russell, who says ‘Thats what I call a Purger’ [see British Museum Satires No. 16602], and Brougham. All the players wear shirts and waistcoats. There are also two others in the field (as spectators they wear coats), Aberdeen (indicated by tartan) who says ‘Foul Foul’, and Cumberland. In the background are many frantically cheering spectators and a marquee from which flies a flag inscribed ‘Umpire Public Opinion’.”–British Museum online catalogue.
831.04.25.01+
Acquired March 2022
A German copy of Hogarth’s “The Discovery” (1743?): a scene in a bedoom where four gentlemen stand beside a curtained bed in which a black woman reclines; she reaches out to touch the chin of one of the men who has evidently just pulled back the curtain. The scene is thought to record a practical joke carried out on the lothario John Highmore by his friends: having arranged an assignation with an attractive young woman, they replaced her with a black prostitute. When he discovered the swap, on climbing into bed, they appeared from hiding. See Paulson.
Hogarth 830.00.00.01 Box 140
Acquired January 2021
The image at top shows an old man sitting in an armchair on the right, his gouty foot resting on a footstool, a crutch seen leaning against a stool beside him. He looks up at a younger woman on the left, who wears a bonnet and apron and is looking down and away from him. Draperies and a framed picture of Cupid shooting an arrow decorate the wall behind them. The text below, in two columns with an age listed at the beginning of each line, tells the humorous tale of the consequences of a man putting off marriage for prideful reasons from age “16 – incipient palpitations towards the young ladies”, through the ages of “29 – rails against the fair sex”, “37 – indulge in every kind of dissipation”, and “48 – thinks living alone quite irksome …”. Eventually, he resolves to have a prudent young woman as housekeeper and companion, gradually feeling some attachment to her and becoming completely under her influence. At age 60, as he begins to feel ill, and “grows rapidly worse, has his will made in her favour, and makes an exit.”
809.00.00.64
Acquired March 2020
A bound album with “Biographical sketch of the life of Mr. Theodore Lane” (pages [33]-59 from Pierce Egan’s 1831 publication: The show folks! (London : Printed for M. Arnold, 1831)), extra-illustrated with portraits of actors, actors in performances, playwrights, and art patrons, followed by cropped impressions, mounted, of the twenty-seven hand-colored plates that accompanied with Pierce Egan’s 1825 The life of an actor and on the final four leaves the nine small, black and white vignettes, also of theatrical scenes also from Egan’s Life of an actor. Lane was an English painter and engraver, who excelled at comic illustration. Also bound in at the front is an autograph letter from Egan dated 15 June 1832 to Mr. Elliott.
Quarto 56 Eg13 832m
Acquired June 2020