In a tavern diners eat eagerly as they sit crowded around tables each covered in white linen and divided from each other by curtains. A waiter delivers a covered tureen to the table on the right as he crosses pathes with the waitress hurrying to the left with two tankards of beer. The diners' hats hang on pegs around the walls. A chandelier hangs before three casement windows with oval mirrors decorating the walls between. The tavern has been identified as either the Rainbow Tavern or the Wheatsheaf Eating House, both on Fleet Street
Printmaker and title from Grego., Publication date from watermark., Not in the Catalogue of prints and drawings in the British Museum. Division I, political and personal satires., Title on the original drawing (now in private hands): The Wheatshief Eating House, Salisbury Court, Fleet Street. See Bridgeman Art database., Later reprint in Caricatures / drawn & etched by those celebrated artists Gillray, Rowlandson, Cruikshanks, &c. (London, 1836) is titled: Table d'hote., Restrike of a print listed by Joseph Grego in Rowlandson the caricaturist, London, Chatto and Windus, 1880, v.2, p. 19., Watermark: J Whatman 1828., and Title supplied in unknown hand below plate: Rainbeau Tavern in Fleet Street in 1800.
The interior of a bare and plainly furnished room in a country inn; a number of middle-aged and plainly dressed men stand waiting for dinner to be served. Through a door in the back wall a serving-boy enters with a tureen, followed by a stout woman carrying a turkey, who is followed by a man-servant. A man (left), wearing spurred jack-boots, stands in profile to the left to hang his hat on a peg. He faces a framed notice which has not yet been filled in with text as in the finished version. In the centre two men, one wearing top-boots, the other in quasi-military dress, face each other, grinning. A third, with a pen and ink-horn at his buttonhole, tries to insinuate himself into the conversation. On the right a stout man stands at a table before a punch-bowl and a sugar-basin: his hands are folded and his eyes closed as if in prayer. Beside and behind him a man with a bottle in one hand sniffs at another bottle (both later labeled in final state). An irate man (left) stands at the end of the table, watch in hand. Above the door a picture of a mounted huntsman hangs askew. On the wall are (left) hats and sticks, (right) a map of the world in two hemispheres
Description:
Title, printmaker, artist, and publication information from later state in the British Museum catalogue., An early state, possibly a proof before letters for a later state with the imprint "London, Publish'd June 26th, 1788, by W. Dickinson, engraver, No. 158 Bond Street" and with the framed notice in the left part of the design expanded and filled with etched text, see no. 7452 in the Catalogue of prints and drawings in the British Museum. Division I, political and personal satires, v. 6., Sheet trimmed to design., and Watermark.
"A pretty young wife sits beside an aged doting and rich husband, reading to him. He delightedly contemplates his glass, which is being filled by Death, who leans over a screen. The girl's left hand is held by a young officer who leans through the window (right)."--British Museum online catalogue
Alternative Title:
Honeymoon and When the old fool has drank his wine and gone to rest, I will be thine
Description:
Title from British Museum catalogue, taken from the heading to the printed page opposite the plate in The English dance of death., Couplet etched below image: When the old fool has drank his wine / and gone to rest, I will be thine., Attributed to Rowlandson in the British Museum catalogue., Sheet trimmed within plate mark with loss of imprint from top margin and verses from bottom margin. Missing text supplied from impression in the British Museum., Plate from: Combe, W. The English dance of death. London : Published at R. Ackermann's Repository of Arts ..., 1815-1816, v. 1, opposite page 106., and Temporary local Medical Library subject terms: Marriage & married life -- Skeleton as Death.
Publisher:
Pub. Augt. 1, 1814, by R. Ackermann's, 101 Strand
Subject (Name):
Combe, William, 1742-1823.
Subject (Topic):
Dance of death, Death (Personification), Marriage, Skeletons, Courtship, Adultery, Military officers, British, Eating & drinking, Alcoholic beverages, Windows, Interiors, Stringed instruments, Books, Dogs, Fireplaces, and Screens