Thomas Rowlandson, Grog on Board, ink and watercolour

This seems like a fitting image to take us into the weekend. An original ink and watercolour wash by Thomas Rowlandson, whose signature appears at the bottom left-hand corner of the paper. It measures approximately 11.5 x 15 inches.

The image was originally engraved for the publisher S.W. Fores, who issued it under the title Grog on Board in January 1789. It was originally accompanied by a companion piece titled Tea on Shore, in which the raucous debauchery of the sailors is compared with a polite society gathering.

I suspect that this is a later version, drawn after the engraving was issued and possibly dating to the 1800s – 1810s, when the publisher Rudolph Ackermann began selling traced copies of the artist’s original works. It looks a bit too similar to the engraving to have been an original sketch that was produced off the cuff. The tone and application of the colouring also appears different (at least to my eye) than the thin washes of delicate colour that Rowlandson usually applied to his watercolours.

This picture is due to come up at auction in a couple of weeks. It carries an estimate of £600 – £800. Personally, I can’t quite make up my mind about it. It may be a genuine original, or a ‘licensed copy’ of the kind Ackermann is known to have produced. Alternatively, it could simply be a contemporary amateur copy which has subsequently been passed off as an original?

Perhaps something to mull over as I prepare to sail off into the weekend with a healthy cargo of grog on board.

A collection of original works by Thomas Rowlandson

There’s a veritable flood tide of original works by Thomas Rowlandson coming up for auction in the UK at the moment. These include genre scenes, character studies and a few humorous pictures. Perhaps the most interesting is The Wigsteads: A Christening which depicts Rowlandson’s friend and fellow caricaturist Henry Wigstead (1745 – 1800) and his family. Although I also have a soft spot for the untitled caricature of a group of drunken students being sternly regarded by their tutors. It appears as though some things never change.

I should point out, before anyone gets all excited and starts emailing me to enquire whether I’d be willing to sell this drawing or that drawing, that none of these pictures belong to me and I’m not offering them for sale. The images are taken from various sale catalogues and are being shared here in order to record original works which would otherwise disappear into anonymous private collections once the auctions have taken place.

 ‘The Afternoon Visit’, n.d., pen, ink and watercolour, 15 x 24cm

‘The patient’, n.d., pen, ink and watercolour 16.5 x 11.5cm

‘Interior scene’, n.d., pen, ink and watercolour, 10 x 17.5cm

The Wigsteads: A Christening, n.d., pen, ink and watercolour 17 x 30cm

 

‘Outside the Oyster Room’, n.d., pen, ink and watercolour, 13 x 9.5cm

Chamber Council, n.d., pen, ink and watercolour, 15 x 19cm

Oakhampton, Cornwall, 1816, pen, ink and watercolour, 16.5 x 24cm

 

‘At the Cottage Door’, n.d., pen, ink and watercolour, 14.25 x 9.5cm

 

 

‘Student drinking club’, n.d., pen, ink and watercolour, 26.5 x 32.5 cm

 

 

James Gillray, John Bull Roasted, c.1807

The image of the nation as a great ox being slowly roasted for consumption by members of the government is one which appears to have occupied James Gillray’s mind on a number of occasions during the mid-1800s. However despite the fact that he made no less than three preparatory drawings for a caricature on this subject, it seems as though he ultimately failed to translate the design into a finished print for some reason.

The drawing shown here was formerly the property of the American cartoonist and Gillray historian Draper Hill (1935 – 2009) and will be offered up for auction here in England in a couple of weeks time. The other two sketched versions of this caricature can be found in the Courtauld Institute and the New York Public Library. The latter version has the line John Bull Roasted hastily scrawled across it and this is assumed to have been Gillray’s working title for the design.

So why did Gillray produce three versions of the same image? Ordinarily this could perhaps be explained by variations between the different drawings which would suggest that he was trying out different ideas as he worked towards a composition that he was happy with. However, apart from the fact that the Courtauld’s version is a mirror image of the other two and is drawn almost entirely in chalk, there does not appear to be a great deal of difference between the three sketches of the design. Nor can this be an image which Gillray kept returning to over a number of years, as the caricature relates to the short-lived ‘Ministry of All the Talents’ and therefore all three drawings must have been completed during their time in office between February 1806 and March 1807. Perhaps the presence of Gillray’s signature on this version and the Courtauld’s copy indicate that they were sold or given away to collectors shortly after they were drawn, thus requiring him to re-draw the design when the idea of engraving it resurfaced some weeks or months later? Whatever the explanation it is clear that Gillray couldn’t quite make up his mind about this caricature and went through the process of repeatedly working it up before finally abandoning the project once the Ministry of All the Talents left office in March 1807.

The handwritten notes on the New York Public Library’s version of this drawing indicate that the image was conceived as a satire on the ‘New Plan of Finance’ announced in Parliament by Lord Henry Petty, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, on 29th January 1807. The plan essentially called for a massive unfunded increase in public debt which would be used to meet the immediate costs of continuing the war against France and her European allies. The public was promised that taxes would remain at their current level for the next three years, but opponents of the plan rightly warned that the proposed levels of borrowing would require swingeing tax rises to service the national debt once this period of grace had expired.

Gillray shows the Prime Minister Lord Grenville as a cook basting John Bull with loans. The flanks of the roasting beef are covered in indistinct labels, one of which reads ‘New Loans’, whilst the juices from the meat drop into the ‘Broad Bottomed Dripping Tray’ which has been placed beneath the carcass on the floor. Lord Henry Petty is depicted as a ‘spit dog’ running in a wheel which turns the spit to which John Bull’s carcass has been fastened. Sidmouth, Lord Privy Seal in the Talents administration, stands on the far right of the images washing dishes in a sink, possibly intended as a visual pun on the new sinking fund that his government was planning to introduce. The caricature may have been intended to serve as a sequel to John Bull and the sinking-fund-a Pretty scheme for reducing the Taxes & Paying-off the National Debt! , Gillray’s other caricature on the New Plan of Finance, which was published by Hannah Humphrey on 23rd February 1807. However the Ministry of All the Talents was dismissed from office a month later and the New Plan of Finance was immediately shelved by their successors, thus rendering further satires on the subject irrelevant.

The image was initially sketched in red chalk and then outlined in ink. The paper carries an 1805 watermark for the company of Ruse & Turners Upper Tovil Mill in Maidstone, Kent. It is estimated to fetch somewhere between £3,000 and £5,000.

That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore

This small oil on board painting by Jan Steen (1626 – 1679) nicely illustrates the influence which Dutch genre paintings had on the development of humorous prints and caricature during the eighteenth-century. Steen’s work is very similar in tone and subject matter to that of later caricaturists such as Thomas Rowlandson, who were always keen to celebrate the joys of conviviality and pleasure. He is thought to have painted around 800 paintings in his lifetime, many of which were translated into engraved copies during the eighteenth-century. A copy of this picture appears in the trompe-l’oeil print Great Britain’s Post Master, published by William Knight of London in 1707. As far as we can tell, the print seems to have been an advertisement for Knight’s wares and it’s therefore possible that he was selling engraved copies of the painting in his shop. Interestingly Knight appears to altered the background of the image, replacing the fireplace with an open doorway on which an owl is perched.

The painting is titled The Joke, although admittedly it may not seem particularly funny to modern viewers. It shows a grimacing fool emptying the contents of a chamberpot over the head of a young woman who has passed out after drinking heavily. It’s been suggested that some of Steen’s humorous paintings often included a moral undertone, warning the viewer of the dangers of pursuing pleasure to excess. In this case it’s possible to discern not only the obvious threat of the upturned piss-pot but also something slightly more sinister, hinted at by the young woman’s open bodice and splayed limbs. This may explain why Knight chose to include an owl, traditionally a symbol of evil in medieval iconography, in his later engraving of the image.

The painting, along with a copy of Knight’s engraving, is going on sale in the US next week with an estimate of $40,000 – 60,000.

Lucifer’s New Row-Barge, c.1721

I was practically drooling into my keyboard when I came across this painting in an auction catalogue shortly before Christmas. It finally went on sale this week, smashing the auctioneer’s estimate of £3,000 – £5,000 and achieving a final hammer price of £24,000. Add on fees and taxes and the lucky so-and-so who’s bought this picture will probably have to part with north of £30,000 before they’re able to take it home with them. Looking at these images it’s not hard to understand why the buyer ended parting with an amount equivalent to the average annual salary for it; it’s an absolutely stunning example of early eighteenth-century satirical art and the banking-related subject matter will no doubt have helped attract a number of buyers with pockets that are deeper than the average oceanic trench (which is somewhat ironic given the artist’s evident antipathy to bankers). 

The painting is a satire on the collapse of the South Sea Bubble and specifically an attack on Sir Robert Knight (1675 – 1744), the man many people held responsible for causing the financial crisis of 1720. Knight was the Chief Cashier of the South Sea Company and in 1719 he had negotiated a deal with the British government which allowed the state to trade the national debt for South Sea Company stock. Superficially this seemed like a good deal for the taxpayer, providing the government with a badly needed injection of cash and the promise of lower interest rates on its debt in future. However it also artificially inflated the value of the Company’s shares by turning them into a form of government-back investment, and gave Knight and his colleagues an incentive to push the value up further in order to increase the profitability of the deal. Almost immediately the Company began talking up the value of its shares, leaking rumours about the imminent conclusion of lucrative trade deals with South America and setting up schemes to loan investors money with which to buy more stock. By the end of the summer of 1720, South Sea share prices had increased from about £100 to almost £1,000 as the country became gripped by a frenzy of speculative investment.

Thousands were ruined when the bubble finally burst at the end of September 1720, including many members of the politically-influential aristocracy. Parliament was recalled in December and the government forced to implement a wave of emergency measures to stabilise the economy and compensate those who had suffered losses. Unlike our own time, this was achieved by the perfectly sensible and straight-forward method of arresting the bankers responsible for the crash, confiscated their estates and using the money raised to pay-off those who’d been duped by their dodgy investments. However the wily Knight managed to slip through the government’s net, fleeing England to seek refuge on the Continent. The state initially tried to pursue him but once it became clear that he had retained meticulous records of all of the MPs, peers and members of the royal court who had received bribes in the form of South Sea Company stock, it was deemed prudent to allow him to remain in self-imposed exile in France. Knight spent the next twenty years living a comfortable life that was split between a palatial Parisian town-house and a country estate at Vincennes. He returned to England following the eventual fall of Robert Walpole’s government in 1743 and died the following year.

The fact that Knight had managed to evade justice evidently incensed many contemporary observes and this painting is essentially a rather virulent form of wish-fulfillment, showing Knight being conveyed to Hell aboard the ship ‘S.S. Inquisition’ (a reference to the Parliamentary committee of inquiry that had been formed to look into the South Sea Company). The vessel is manned by demons who exhort their passenger to continue to lie, cheat and covet wealth, and is being sailed into the flaming jaws of a huge beast personifying eternal damnation. Knight himself seems blissfully ignorant of his impending fate and looks away to the left with a slight smile on his face, no doubt a sign that he is pleased with himself for having evaded the earthly forces of justice. In his right hand he carries a goblet containing a flaming heart labelled “My Cup is full of Indignation” and “My Heart is Zealous for my Countries Ruin”, suggesting that any indignant claims of innocence simply mask a contemptuous willingness to bring the nation to ruin in order to further his own ends. He stands on a pile of gold coins that pour from a huge upturned purse labelled “the glory of the wicked”, while his left sleeve is decorated with a coin showing tails and his right with one showing heads, the message here is simple – ‘heads I win, tails you lose.’

The central image is surrounded by five smaller satirical motifs on greed and retribution. On the right of the picture we see another demon holding a key to a safe deposit box whilst reassuring Knight that the devil remains his “faithful cashier”. Below this Knight’s elegant horse dines from a trough filled with gold and a bound man is being flogged with a flail tipped with coins. At the top left-hand corner of the picture contains a scaffold from which a life-sized knave of diamonds card is being hung in Knight’s place. Beneath that is an image of a man, probably meant to be Knight, standing in the pillory to await punishment.

The picture is oil on canvas, measures 72 x 63cms and carries no signature, date or title. However we know that at least three printed versions of this image were published in or around May 1721 under the title Lucipher’s new Row-Barge [sic]. The most impressive of these, and the one which bears the closest resemblance to our painting, is a fine line engraving which was also published anonymously (below). The design is largely identical to the painted version, save for the addition of a plaque carrying a quote from the Book of Ezekiel – “Thou hast greedily gained of thy Neighbours by Extortion … Behold, therefore I have smitten mine Hand at thy dishonest Gain” – and three columns of verse beneath the image damning Knight and his ilk and wishing every punishment under the sun upon them. We do not know whether the painting preceded the print or vice versa and therefore whether the decision to exclude the additional text from the painting was deliberate or not? The other two printed versions of this image are lower quality copies which were evidently aimed at middling and lower class consumers and were presumably created sometime after the more high-end engraving was published. One of these of was the woodblock engraving by John Bell which used to decorate the front edition of the Weekly Journal or British Gazetteer of May 21st 1721, which allows us to date the creation of the design with some degree of accuracy to the spring of that year.