Bawdy Brits & West End Wit: Satirical Prints of the Georgian
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Dickinson College Dickinson Scholar Student Scholarship & Creative Works By Year Student Scholarship & Creative Works 2-18-2011 Bawdy Brits & West End Wit: Satirical Prints of the Georgian Era Emily Bastian Dickinson College Christy Lee Gray Dickinson College Aimee Lynn Laubach Dickinson College Emily Sarah Maran Dickinson College Matthew aG ry Morowitz Dickinson College See next page for additional authors Follow this and additional works at: http://scholar.dickinson.edu/student_work Part of the Interdisciplinary Arts and Media Commons, and the Other History of Art, Architecture, and Archaeology Commons Recommended Citation Earenfight, Phillip, et al. Bawdy Brits & West End Wit: Satirical Prints of the Georgian Era. Carlisle, Pa.: The rT out Gallery, Dickinson College, 2011. This Exhibition Catalog is brought to you for free and open access by the Student Scholarship & Creative Works at Dickinson Scholar. It has been accepted for inclusion in Student Scholarship & Creative Works By Year by an authorized administrator of Dickinson Scholar. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Authors Emily Bastian, Christy Lee Gray, Aimee Lynn Laubach, Emily Sarah Maran, Matthew Gary Morowitz, Allison Marie Schell, Carey Elizabeth Stadnick, Margaret Jeanne Staudter, Laura Ives Wilson, Lauren Elizabeth Woodcock, Kathryn Grace Zell, Phillip Earenfight, and Trout Gallery This exhibition catalog is available at Dickinson Scholar: http://scholar.dickinson.edu/student_work/3 Bawdy Brits West End Wit Satirical Prints of the Georgian Era & Bawdy Brits West End Wit Satirical Prints of the Georgian Era February 18 – April 16, 2011 Curated by: Emily Bastian Christy Gray Aimee Laubach Emily Maran Matthew Morowitz Allison Schell Carey Stadnick Margaret Staudter Laura Wilson Lauren Woodcock Grace Zell THE& TROUT GALLERY • Dickinson College • Carlisle, Pennsylvania Acknowledgements Bawdy Brits & West End Wit: Satirical Prints of the Georgian Era is a curatorial project by senior art history students participating in an exhibition seminar at Dickinson College. The annual seminar is designed to introduce students to the practice of preparing an exhibition and catalogue. Working with objects drawn from The Trout Gallery’s permanent collection, the curators selected the works for the exhibition, organized the material into major themes, and prepared the following essays. Bawdy Brits & West End Wit was developed in response to the promised gift of satirical prints to The Trout Gallery by the Brookes V Limited Partnership made in honor of Dr. and Mrs. Leon Ginsburg. This gift to The Trout Gallery was coordinated by Nancy Siegel, Associate Professor of Art History at Towson University. We thank the following individuals and institutions for generously providing essential documenta- tion and imagery for this catalogue: Tina Maresco, Specialist, Interlibrary Loan Services; James Gerenscer, Archivist, Special Collections; and Christine Bombaro, Research Librarian, Waidner-Spahr Library, Dickinson College. Special gratitude is due to Kimberley Nichols and Patricia Pohlman for their skillful design of this catalogue. We thank Andrew Bale for photographing the works for the catalogue. The Trout Gallery is served graciously by members of the Friends of The Trout Gallery and the Exhibition and Collections Committees. Special thanks is due to the staff members of The Trout Gallery who helped make this exhibition possible. Stephanie Keifer, the museum’s senior administrative associate, copy-edited the catalogue text and provided essential organizational services. James Bowman prepared the objects and worked with members of the seminar to design and install the exhibition and Wendy Pires, along with her student interns, organized and delivered the various outreach programs. Rosalie Lehman, Satsuki Swisher, and Catherine Sacco assisted with the outreach programs and provided essential visitor services. The Trout Gallery’s team of student interns assisted the museum staff in countless ways: Marianne Hutt ’11, Mauro David Lifschitz Arribio ’13, Azul Mertnoff ’11, Christina Neno ’11, Jennifer Rokoski ’12, Emily Rother ’12, and Emily Noss (Shippensburg University) ’11. Members of the Exhibition Seminar Phillip Earenfight, Associate Professor of Art History and Director, The Trout Gallery Cover: This publication was produced in part through the generous support of the George Cruikshank, Mixing a Recipe for Corns (detail), 1835. Etching, hand Helen Trout Memorial Fund and the Ruth Trout Endowment at Dickinson coloring. The Trout Gallery, Dickinson College (cat. 8). College. Published by The Trout Gallery, Dickinson College, Carlisle, Pennsyl- vania, 17013. James Gillray, The King of Brobdingnag and Gulliver (detail), 1804. Etching, engraving, aquatint, hand coloring. The Trout Gallery, Dickinson College Copyright © 2011 The Trout Gallery. All rights reserved. No part of this (cat. 33). publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or Back Cover: otherwise, without written permission from The Trout Gallery. James Gillray, Very Slippy-Weather (detail), 1808. Etching, engraving, hand coloring. The Trout Gallery, Dickinson College (cat. 37). Design: Kimberley Nichols and Patricia Pohlman Printing: Triangle Printing, Lancaster, Pennsylvania Frontispiece: James Gillray, Very Slippy-Weather, 1808. Etching, engraving, hand coloring. ISBN 978-0-9826156-1-4 The Trout Gallery, Dickinson College (cat. 37). Table of Contents Introduction: British Satirical Prints of the Georgian Era at The Trout Gallery 4 Phillip Earenfight Essays In With the Old Comedy: Satirical Prints in Georgian London and Connections to Ancient Greek Satire 9 Grace Zell Reading the Laughs: The Humor of Text in Prints of the Georgian Era 14 Carey Stadnick From Britannia to Bull: The Embodiment of Englishness 20 Emily Bastian Promis’d Horrors: Reactions to Napoleon in British Satirical Prints and Francisco Goya’s Los Desastres de la Guerra Series 26 Matthew Morowitz Quacks Among Quackery: Medicine and Satirical Prints in Georgian London 33 Christy Gray The Golden Age of Hairdressers: The Portrayal of Hair in Caricature of the Georgian Era 41 Lauren Woodcock Lustful Consumption: Prostitution in the Satirical Prints of Georgian London 46 Emily Maran Hannah Humphrey, Print Seller of Georgian London 51 Allison Schell “Honi soit qui mal y pense”: Censorship of British Satirical Prints in the Georgian Era 56 Laura Wilson Classical Themes and Motifs in the British Satirical Prints of the Georgian Era 60 Margaret Staudter High Art in Low Art: An Exploration of Fine Art References in British Satirical Prints 66 Aimee Laubach Illustrated Catalogue 73 3 Introduction: British Satirical Prints of the Georgian Era at The Trout Gallery Phillip Earenfight, Seminar Advisor Director, The Trout Gallery On February 10, 1808, Hannah Humphrey published James Gillray’s Very Slippy-Weather, a satirical print that shows a comical scene of a man slipping on the icy street outside her print shop at No. 27 St. James’s Street, London (Fig. 1).1 Behind the unfortunate man, who struggles to maintain his wig, coins, and snuff box, to say nothing of his composure, a crowd has gathered at Humphrey’s windows to view the prints on display. The prints—all by Gillray—feature a range of topics from contemporary politics, to health, personalities, leisure activities, and life in the city. This simple etching, which sold for little more than a shilling—or two if hand colored—provides a view into a popular aspect of eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century London and is a fitting introduction to Bawdy Brits & West End Wit, British Satirical Prints of the Georgian Era. Humphrey’s print shop was located on St. James’s Street, west of Piccadilly and between St. James’s Park and Mayfair—in the broader area known as the “West End” (Fig. 2).2 The West—or “Worst”—End of London was, during the century following Shakespeare’s death, the largely undevel- oped area between old center of London and the city of Westminster, along the northwest bend in the Thames. Save for key streets that paralleled the river and connected the two cities—The Strand and White Hall—much of the growth along this stretch was restricted to the areas near the wharf. Fig. 1. James Gillray, Very Slippy-Weather., 1808. Etching, engraving, hand However, during the seventeenth century, lack of space in the coloring. The Trout Gallery, Dickinson College, Carlisle, PA (cat. 37). old city forced the development of the West End, pushing Fig. 2. Map of London. 4 new development in the areas north and northwest, well beyond Piccadilly, toward the fashionable neighborhoods of Mayfair, Soho, and Bloomsbury. Today this area houses many of the city’s major sites, including Charing Cross, the National Gallery, the Royal Academy, and Trafalgar Square. However, during the Georgian era, this highly desirable section was home to many of the city’s most prominent officials and royals, coffee houses, gin halls, art dealers, social clubs, taverns, print-sellers, and brothels. Regarding the latter, it is estimated that as much as 20 percent of the city’s female population was engaged in prostitution and many of them centered their activities at Covent Garden and the West End.3 Although the eastern edge of the West End merged with the area near Covent Garden, its western edge termi- nated in the ever fashionable St. James’s area, which abutted the royal palace and Westminster to the south.