Six members of the society sit in a row, each singing a different song. All are ugly and elderly except one lady who turns to her neighbour singing, "In sweetest harmony we live." The latter, almost bald, sits on the extreme left, singing, "Time has not thinn'd my flowing hair." A fat, ugly lady bawls towards her left hand neighbour: "Encompass'd in [an] angels frame." He sings to her: "Together let us ran[ge] the fields." A man with closed eyes from which tears fall, sings: "Said a smile to a tear what cause have you hear." A gouty, old naval officer on the extreme right sings: "Oh exquisite harmony!! Music has charms to soften rocks and bend the knotted oak." A dishevelled footman with a bottle in his coat-pocket walks from the right, tilting his salver of glasses so that they fall on a squalling cat. He sings tipsily: "From night till morn I take my glass I hopes to forget my Chloe!!" A dog on the left howls
Alternative Title:
Catalanian picnic society at private rehearsal
Description:
Title etched below image. and Sheet trimmed within plate mark.
Publisher:
Pubd. by T. Tegg, 111 Cheapside
Subject (Topic):
Cats, Crying, Dogs, Organizations, Rehearsals, Servants, Singing, and Sleeping
"A companion print to BMSat 9670. In a squalid room French dancers practise to a fiddle played by an older man (right) who dances as he plays. The parents of the four children dance, facing each other. She is elegant, buxom, with an elaborate feathered coiffure. He is lean, wearing a tattered but well-fitting coat over bare legs, with sleeve-ruffles (cf. the old gibe that the Frenchman wore ruffles but no shirt). He wears a toupee wig with a long queue. A boy and girl, both with hair elaborately dressed, dance together more vigorously. A little girl (right) with bare legs practises the first position, heels together. On the left a boy plays the pipe and tabor to two dogs, one wearing cloak and hat, whom he is teaching to dance. His chair is the only furniture except for a truckle-bed (left) turned up to the wall and a much-tilted wall-mirror (right). A lean cat has climbed to a small cupboard recessed in the wall near the ceiling and licks a stoppered bottle. The cupboard contains a coffee-pot, a covered jar, &c. A print of two clumsy peasant dancers is pinned to the wall, from which plaster has flaked. All practise with serious concentration."--British Museum online catalogue
Description:
Title etched below image.
Publisher:
Pubd. Novr. 5, 1792 by S.W. Fores, No. 3 Piccadilly
Subject (Geographic):
France
Subject (Topic):
Foreign opinion, British, Cats, Children, Couples, Dogs, Dance, and Interiors
Bretherton, James, approximately 1730-1806, printmaker
Published / Created:
publish'd 7th December 1772.
Call Number:
Folio 75 B87 770 (Oversize)
Collection Title:
Page 79. Bunbury album.
Image Count:
1
Resource Type:
still image
Abstract:
"A family scene of barren discomfort. An elderly man (left) in profile to the right sits in a high-backed wooden arm-chair asleep. Next him his wife sits asleep, her hands clasped, her left elbow supported on a table. At the table sits a boy asleep over a book. On the right, very upright on the edge of her chair, sits a middle-aged woman, wearing a low bodice, her hair dressed high. In the foreground a dog and cat are fighting. The room is lit by one guttering candle which stands on the table. A window and a door are indicated."--British Museum online catalogue
Description:
Title etched below image., Sheet trimmed within plate mark., and Mounted on page 79 of: Bunbury album.
Bretherton, James, approximately 1730-1806, printmaker
Published / Created:
publish'd 7th December 1772.
Call Number:
Bunbury 772.12.07.03+ Impression 1
Collection Title:
Page 79. Bunbury album.
Image Count:
1
Resource Type:
still image
Abstract:
"A family scene of barren discomfort. An elderly man (left) in profile to the right sits in a high-backed wooden arm-chair asleep. Next him his wife sits asleep, her hands clasped, her left elbow supported on a table. At the table sits a boy asleep over a book. On the right, very upright on the edge of her chair, sits a middle-aged woman, wearing a low bodice, her hair dressed high. In the foreground a dog and cat are fighting. The room is lit by one guttering candle which stands on the table. A window and a door are indicated."--British Museum online catalogue
Description:
Title etched below image., Sheet trimmed within plate mark., 1 print : etching with drypoint on laid paper ; sheet 239 x 295 mm., and Imperfect; sheet trimmed within plate mark with partial loss of image from top edge.
"A young woman plays the piano (right) with painful intentness, and sings, as does the man who holds open her music-book, inscribed 'On Rosy Bed by Tinckling Billy'. A middle-aged military officer stands full face playing the flute. A fat elderly 'cit' sleeps in an arm-chair (left); his wig has fallen off and his legs rest on another chair. Behind him a very obese man and an ugly and over-dressed woman with a grotesquely thin neck sing from the same piece of music: 'On Rosy Bed'. He warms his back at a blazing fire; the feathers in her hair are alight in one of the candles on the chimney-piece. A small boy blows a toy trumpet, a dog howls and a cat miaows, standing on an open music-book inscribed 'Water Part ....' Chinese figures on the chimney-piece and the lintel of the door represent comic musicians playing different instruments."--British Museum online catalogue
Alternative Title:
Delights of harmony
Description:
Title etched below image., Date of publication from unverified data in local card catalog record., and Sheet trimmed within plate mark.
A scene in an artist's studio lit from an attic window (left). Four connoisseurs are grouped round a large canvas on an easel: an Apollo with a sheaf of arrows, head turned in profile to the left. The model is a tall black man in the pose of the Apollo but with very different features, the left hand holding the stick of a broom which supports the pose. A fifth connoisseur reaches up to alter the position of the model's head. The artist stands beside his canvas facing the invaders, the left hand, holding palette and brushes, rests on the canvas; he sucks his mahl-stick with a gloomy scowl. On the extreme right a cat sits in a cradle, behind which an alarmed little boy hides. The artist's wife, with an infant in her arms, faces the fire with her back to the visitors whose unwelcome intrusion is apparent. Behind is a bed with drawn curtains. Three casts from the antique decorate the bare room. The model's coat and hat lie on the ground (right). On the far left in the foreground a dog urinates against two canvases leaning against the wall
Alternative Title:
Assemblée des connisseurs
Description:
Titles in English and French etched below image. and Imperfect; sheet trimmed within plate mark with loss of all text from bottom edge. Missing text supplied from impression in the British Museum.
"Scene in a neat parlour or music room, with open square piano and lyre-back chairs. A middle-aged termagant, coquettishly dressed, has overturned her chair and stands with raised fist, shrieking at a very young man in riding-dress. He sits (left) with hat and riding-switch beside him, bewildered and passive; his dog takes cover under his chair, looking sideways at an aggressive cat which arches its back against its mistress. A cockatoo screams from its perch. On the piano, which is inscribed Row Maker, is an open music-book: Blow High. Blow Low; on the floor is a book open at Wake to Ecstacy the living Lyre. Behind the woman's head is a convex wall-mirror, topped by a carved eagle which looks fiercely down. This is flanked by two sea-scapes: Calm (left), ships becalmed, and Storm (right), a ship struck by lightning and about to be submerged in towering waves."--British Museum catalogue
Description:
Title from caption below image., Printmaker from British Museum catalogue., Pictures in image amplify subject of the print., and Sheet trimmed within plate mark.
A couple of Irishmen look in horror at a white cat in a church graveyard."--British Museum online catalogue
Description:
Title from item., Sheet trimmed within plate mark., Plate numbered in upper right corner: N. 16., and Undescribed in the Catalogue of prints and drawings in the British Museum. Division I, political and personal satires.