Thomas Rowlandson, The Political Hydra, 1806.
This copy of Thomas Rowlandson’s The Political Hydra is the latest item to find its way into The Printshop Window’s personal collection of Georgian caricature prints. The image was originally published in December 1788 by S.W. Fores and was one of a number of satires to appear around that time which dealt with Charles James Fox and the Whig’s role in the unfolding Regency Crisis. Fores then reissued the print eighteen years later, in April 1806, to coincide with the appointment of the Whig-led coalition government in which Fox was serving as Foreign Secretary. Unfortunately, as the publication line had been trimmed from this copy and as such I couldn’t tell whether my copy was one of the 1788 originals or part of the later edition that had been brought out in the nineteenth-century. I therefore decided to refer to the recently revamped online catalogue of the British Museum and see if I could try and date the print.
I found that the Museum actually holds four coloured copies of this caricature: two carrying the original 1788 publication line and two marked with the revised details for 1806. Comparing my print to the images on the Museum’s website, it quickly became clear that the colouring was exactly the same as that used on the two late prints from 1806 and that my copy of The Political Hydra was almost certainly a later re-strike. While looking through these images, I noticed that there were some significant variations in the way in which the different versions of the image had been coloured; with the two prints from 1788 differing both from each other and from the later editions. This got me thinking about the processes that may have been used to colour Georgian caricature prints and whether we can infer anything from these differences in colouring.
While it’s perfectly easy to understand why the more collectable coloured prints dominate the surviving body of eighteenth-century caricatures, we shouldn’t assume that colouring was a default mode of production for Georgian printsellers. Colouring caricatures cost time and money and it’s unlikely that the tight profit margins of the publishing business would have allowed printsellers to carry large numbers of coloured prints in their stock. Indeed, the fact that the publication lines of so many printsellers states prices for both coloured and uncoloured copies of the design may indicate that prints were normally only coloured to order. The additional cost of colouring prints also means that they were unlikely to have been as common as uncoloured versions. The exact cost varied according to the printseller but in almost all cases it would appear that the price of a caricature would increase by anything from 50% to 100% once the customer had asked for it to be coloured.
The fact that so few of London’s print shops appear to have employed colourists on a regular basis may also suggest that the production of coloured prints was not the norm. We know for example that Rudolph Ackermann, who was undoubtedly one of London’s larger and more successful publishers, would send bundles of prints out to the homes of his colourists and pay a set rate for each item that was returned in a satisfactory condition. If an arrangement such as this was standard across the print trade then it seems reasonable to assume that the demand for coloured prints was rarely sufficient to warrant the employment of a permanent colourist on staff. It also stands to reason that the number of colourists used would have increased in times of high demand and that therefore the notable differences in the tone and application of colouring may provide a very rough indication of the popularity of a particular print. For example, if we return to our copies of The Political Hydra from 1788, we can clearly see that these prints were coloured by two individuals who, although working from a common set of instructions, were using different paints and had varying approaches to details like the colouring of Fox’s hair and the crowns. Conversely, if we compare my copy of the print with the two other 1806 editions held by the British Museum, the colouring is almost exactly the same. This may indicate that demand for this second edition was insufficiently high to warrant the employment of more than one colourist.
Thomas Rowlandson, The Political Hydra, 1788(a)
Thomas Rowlandson, The Political Hydra, 1788(b)
Clearly, we need to test this theory out before jumping to any conclusions but a quick glance through the British Museum’s catalogue would certainly support the notion that some prints were more prone to variations in colouring than others. As such, I suspect that this is a subject that we will be revisiting again at some point in the future.
The Printshop Window 
A short reply.
At a recent event I suggested something similar: that colour was not the default mode of holding satirical prints and that museum collections are largely coloured due to an accident of survival (or more precisely due to collector preferences). I think this is a logical position, but was met with the claim that the engraving/etching of satirical prints during this period was done in such a way that the artists expected the prints to be coloured. Apparently the line suggests as much. Now I couldn’t fathom the logic of this, particularly if (as I believe) publishers had more power than artists, but some rather eminent folks (household names in our area if you will) seem convinced.
Your thoughts?
I’d probably argue that in many cases the application of colour was actually detrimental to the artist’s original engraving.
Gillray for example, must have spent ages adding all that superfine stippling to ‘A voluptuary under the horrors of digestion’ and yet it’s almost completely lost under the paintwork that’s been added to the coloured versions. You could also pick out just about any print that was published by Thomas Tegg in the 1810s and there’s a good chance that it will be covered with a hastily-applied layer of thick bright paint that totally obscures the finer parts of the engraved image underneath.
There also doesn’t appear to be any connection to the surviving proofs we have for caricatures by Gillray and Rowlandson and the colouring that was used on the finished prints themselves.
If John Ford’s description of Ackermann’s system of employing colourists is accurate, it would appear as though the colouring was determined by the printseller or his foreman. I suspect that colourists were given a basic outline of how the design should be coloured but were then left to add details at their own discretion and in the knowledge that they were unlikely to be paid for anything which was deemed to be of poor quality.
“Gillray for example, must have spent ages adding all that superfine stippling to ‘A voluptuary under the horrors of digestion’ and yet it’s almost completely lost under the paintwork that’s been added to the coloured versions.”
The argument, as far as I can fathom it, goes that this very stippling was done with colour in mind: in that a light wash of a single colour (say red) over an area (say a coat) was given shading et al by the fine stippling.
I’m not convinced.
Stippling was certainly used to add shading to the finished image but it doesn’t necessarily follow that the engraver expected the final design to be coloured. After all, the stippling technique had been developed for use in engraved portraiture and this was a medium in which finished prints were hardly ever published in coloured editions.
The economic case against colouring being a default part of the publication process is perhaps the most compelling. Adding colour to prints cost money and increased the lead-in time of printsellers who were often desperate to make sure that caricatures got to market quickly. It therefore stands to reason that publishers would have been reluctant to keep large numbers of coloured prints in stock and thus risk increasing the losses arising from unsold copies.
I’d guess that most publishers produced an initial run of coloured prints which they knew were likely to sell to regular customers but that the majority of prints were only coloured to order once they’d been sold.
I heartily agree. Keep up the good work.
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