An old officer in uniform with a wrinkled face and carbuncles looks lustfully at a pretty young woman as they walk together on a path, his hand grasping hers.
Drawings R79 no. 24 Box D146
Acquired June 2023
“A very fat and jovial volunteer, dressed as a light horseman, holds ln his left hand a pole on which is the head of Napoleon in profile to the right. and wearing a huge cocked hat decorated with plumes, tricolour cockade, gold lace, and tassels. The hand that holds the pole holds also, by the hair, a bunch of bleeding heads which form a grisly garland round it. In his right hand is his sabre. He is surrounded by women; two embrace him, others hasten up; he swaggers with raised left leg, saying, “There you rouges, there! there’s the Boney Part – twenty more killed them!! twenty more killed them too!! I have destroyed half the Army with this same Toledo.” The women say, respectively: “Bless the Warrior that saved our Virgin charms”; “take care I’ll smother him with Kisses”; “Oh! what frightful Heads how ravishing they look, – they would have used us ill I am sure”; “ha ha, thats, that great man little Boney, how glum he looks.” An elderly spinster exclaims: “ah bless him he has saved us from Death and Vileation.” A handsome woman turns to a tall young man in civilian dress on the extreme left, saying, “There you Poltroon look how that noble Hero’s Caressed!” He turns away, saying, “Ods Niggins I wish I had been a Soldier too then the Girls would have run after me – but I never could bear the smell of Gun powder”.”–British Museum online catalogue.
803.08.01.01+
Acquired April 2023
“A stout, ugly, and elderly woman holds in her left hand a barber’s block, with a carved head in profile, on which is an elaborate pyramidal wig with ringlets. This she is covering with powder or flour from a dredger. Her hair is short and scanty; on her head is a very large black patch, two smaller ones are on her temple. She is dressed in undergarments, showing stays, and frilled petticoat over which is worn a pocket. Her dress, the bodice of which is almost cylindrical from its stiffening whalebone, is on a stool behind her. Her back is turned to the casement window (right) through which look two grinning old women, wearing frilled muslin caps. Over the window, and over the wall on its left, is a heavily festooned curtain. Sacarissa stands facing a low rectangular table (left), on which are a bottle and wine-glass, a candle (?) in a triangular shade, which is falling over, having apparently been knocked by the wig, patches, a comb, a paper, &c. Behind on the wall, in deep shadow, is a picture of a dome inscribed “The Pantheon”.”–British Museum online catalogue.
772.02.24.02+
Acquired April 2023
An old woman in patched-up clothes with her harp huddles in a doorway. The satire contrasts the life of a street singer with the sweet lyrics of the popular ballad by Thomas Moore.
829.00.00.117+
Acquired April 2023
Half-length portrait of Lucy Walter, turned slightly left and looking at the viewer; wearing a pearl necklace, pearl earings, and a blue gown adorned with strings of pearls.
Drawings H263 no. 7 Box D125
Acquired October 2022
19 765L
Acquired July 2021
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.
Folio 75 H67 768B
Acquired January 2021
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.
Hogarth 797.08.01.01++ Box 310
Acquired January 2021
“Plate from a pirated series of Hogarth’s Rake’s Progress, not based on one of the original prints: Covent Garden with St Paul’s church and the buildings at the north-western corner of the piazza; the Rake (here called Ramble) and drunken friends are accosting women passers-by and the watch has arrived to set about them with staves.”–British Museum online catalogue.
Hogarth 735.00.00.19+
Acquired January 2021
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.
Hogarth 797.10.01.03++ Box 310
Acquired January 2021