"A corner of a room hung with unframed canvasses is a background for five men, all in profile to the left. Four closely inspect a picture of two vast pigs lying outside a thatched hovel. The foremost, an old man, peers through spectacles held reversed; in his left hand is a 'Catalogue of Pictures by Morl...'. He is identified in the 'Illustrative Description', 1830, and by Grego, as Captain Baillie, the engraver and connoisseur, by Wright and Evans conjecturally as J. J. Angerstein. Behind is a profile identified as that of Mitchell, a banker; next is Caleb Whitefoord, looking through his glass (see BMSats 8169, 8725, &c). Behind him stands George Baker, a patron of English water-colour painters [print collector and bibliophile], holding a paper on which the word 'Pigs' is legible. Standing apart, with a grossly fat nan pressed on a canvas which he raises from the wall, is Mortimer, a picture-dealer and restorer. He puffs and spits from coarse protruding lips a picture, the head and shoulders of an enormous boar. The pictures burlesques of Morland's manner: (1) A grossly fat butcher inspects a fat pig displayed by a farmer; (2) a man with a pitchfork drives pigs from a stackyard; (3) a yokel embraces a haymaker in a barn while a braying donkey looks in at the door; (4) a mounted sportsman at an alehouse door takes a glass from a hugely fat woman; (5) a ragged woman with an infant on her back tells a stolid farmer his fortune. On the floor, in front of the connoisseurs, an empty frame and a bulging portfolio labelled 'Sketches from Nature by G. Morland' lean against the wall."--British Museum online catalogue.
Description:
Title etched below image.
Publisher:
H. Humprey, No. 27 St. James's Street
Subject (Name):
Angerstein, John Julius,--1735-1823--Caricatures and cartoons., Auchincloss, Hugh Dudley--Ownership., Baillie, William,--1723-1810--Caricatures and cartoons., Harvey, Francis--Ownership., Humphrey, Hannah, active 1774-1817, publisher., Morland, George,--1763-1804., and Whitefoord, Caleb,--1734-1810--Caricatures and cartoons.
"A thin man stands in profile to the left, in the corner of a picture-gallery, inspecting through a glass a picture of a nude and buxom nymph or Venus. He holds a long cane and a 'Catalogue of Paintings'. He has a long pigtail queue and wears a cocked hat. Three other pictures are visible, all of nude women in the manner (burlesqued) of 'high art'."--British Museum online catalogue, description of a later state of the same composition.
Alternative Title:
Caleb curious
Description:
Early state, before addition of the title "Caleb curious" above image. Cf. No. 8169 in the Catalogue of prints and drawings in the British Museum. Division I, political and personal satires, v. 6., One line of text below title: Ay he will wholesale you new wine, and anon retail you old wit. Shakespier., Printmaker from description of later state in the British Museum catalogue., and Title etched below image.
Publisher:
S. W. Fores, No. 3 Piccadilly
Subject (Name):
Auchincloss, Hugh Dudley--Ownership., Fores, S. W., publisher., Harvey, Francis--Ownership., and Whitefoord, Caleb,--1734-1810--Caricatures and cartoons.