LASSCO Archive

A framed and mounted, hand coloured engraving by the Georgian satirist James Gillray. “An elderly man bumps violently on the pavement outside Hannah Humphrey’s print shop in a sitting position; his legs (in tasselled Hessians) fly up, but he carefully holds a thermometer in a vertical position. Hat and wig fly off, coins pour from his breeches pocket, a snuff-box bowls away, a dog barks at him. He is unobserved by four men who gaze at the shop-window, and by a grotesquely ugly ragged boy with skates, who walks past, intent on the window. he shop-front is depicted in detail: a glass-paned door (r.), with a fan-light above it. ‘Humphrey’ over the door; ‘N° 27’ on the door-post. Through the glass door two men, one a fat drink-blotched parson, are seen inspecting ‘Catholic Emancipation’. Next the door (l.) is a bow-fronted shop-window, every pane filled with one of Gillray’s prints. The upper rightow are (l. to r.): ‘Taking Physick’ , ‘A Gentle Emetic’, ‘A Brisk Cathartic’  .’Breathing a Vein’ , ‘Charming Well again’, all probably drawn by Sneyd. The next row: ‘in at the Death’, ‘French Gingerbd Baker’, ‘King of Brobdingg & Gulliver’, ‘Kick at ye Broad Bottoms’, ‘Oh that this too Solid Flesh’. The titles of the four following are hidden by the heads of the window-gazers: [‘A Decent Story’] , [‘Ladies Dress, as it soon will be,’] , [‘Two-Penny Whist’], a print, largely obscured, and probably drawn to fill a small space: a man raises a club to smite down Napoleon, whose head, cocked hat, and hands only are visible, ‘Palemon & Lavinia’. The lower prints are hidden by the railings. ” – British Museum listing