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.
"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