"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.
Subject (Geographic):
France--Foreign opinion, British.
Subject (Name):
Auchincloss, Hugh Dudley--Ownership., Fores, S. W., publisher., Fuchs, Eduard,--1870-1940--Ownership., Fuchs, Eduard,--1870-1940--Stamp., Harvey, Francis--Ownership., and Rowlandson, Thomas, 1756-1827, artist.
Subject (Topic):
Cats., Children., Couples. , Dance., Dogs., and Interiors.
"One of a set of eight plates, No. 7 (not mentioned by Grego) being missing, all having the same signatures. They may have been intended to burlesque Wheatley's 'Cries' (1793-7), from which they appear to derive. [The subjects are different from those of Wheatley, and there is no element of copying, but the group, with sentimental or humorous incident and architectural background, was Wheatley's innovation on the traditional single figure representing the 'Cries of London'. Cf. W. Roberts, 'The Cries of London', 1934, p. 12.] A ragged man, with traps of various patterns slung round him, and a trap in each hand, offers his wares to an old man (left) who looks from his bulk or stall, on which are a bird in a wicker cage and a rabbit in a hutch. A little boy and girl, hand in hand, stare intently at the rabbit. A dog snarls at two rats in one of the traps. A woman looks down from a casement window over the pent-house roof of the stall. In the background are a church spire and the old gabled houses characteristic of the slums of St. Giles and Westminster."--British Museum online catalogue.
"A pretty young maidservant stands on a doorstep (right) while a man, Irish in appearance, gazes insinuatingly into her face as he fills her bowl with brick-dust from a jar. He has an ass which stands patiently, a double sack pannier-wise across his back and a second jar or measure standing on the sack. The profile of a shrewish old woman looks through the door at the couple, who are intent on each other. A dog barks at the girl. Behind is a street, the nearer houses tall the farther ones lower and gabled. At the doorway opposite a woman appears to be giving food to a poor woman and child. A man and woman lean from the attic windows of adjacent houses to converse. A little chimney-sweep emerges from a chimney, waving his brush."--British Museum online catalogue.
A view of the interior of a busy English barracks shows a more domestic than military atmosphere although weapons and other gear adorn the walls and lay scattered on the floor. The scene includes a woman nursing a baby (left); beside her, one soldier brushes his britches while another adjusts his helmet. A second woman (center) carries a child on her back as she hands a drink to a soldier who sits on a bunk; a basket of rolls (?) hangs from her arm. A third woman (left) stands at a washing tub wringing out clothes as she looks up approvingly at a young boy dressed as a soldier; beside her a handsome, well-dressed solder holds a baby who smiles at the scene.
Description:
Companion print to: French barracks., Not in the Catalogue of prints and drawings in the British Museum. Division I, political and personal satires., and Title etched below image.
Publisher:
S. W. Fores, No. 3 Piccadilly
Subject (Name):
Auchincloss, Hugh Dudley--Ownership., Fores, S. W., publisher., Great Britain.--Army--Barracks and quarters--Caricatures and cartoons., Harvey, Francis--Ownership., Malton, Thomas, 1748-1804, printmaker., and Rowlandson, Thomas, 1756-1827, artist.
Subject (Topic):
Arms & armament., Barracks--British., Breast feeding., Children., Dogs., Grooming., Laundry., Soldiers--English., and Women.