5 items found
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Princely Piety, or the worshippers at Wanstead,
£595Princely Piety, or the worshippers at Wanstead,
A hand-coloured etching by the caricaturist George Cruikshank depicting the wooing of a wealthy young heiress by a cast of reprobate suitors. Upon the death of her only brother James at the age of 11 in 1805 Catherine Tylney-Long became the richest commoner in England in her own right. At the tender of of 16 the 'Wiltshire Heiress' had come into a fortune of nearly £30,000,000 in today's money. This made the poor girl a prime target for every fortune hunter and indebted rake in England who wished to clear his creditors. The law as it stood in the early 19th Century had degenerated to such a degree that, under the principle of coverture, it denied a married woman any property at all in her own right while her legal existence as a feme covert was entirely subsumed in that of her husband. This left the wealthy orphan daughter of Sir James Tylney long, 7th Baronet in a difficult and precarious position, caught between the social stigma attached to unmarried womanhood and the appeals of a host of insinuating cads seeking her hand in marriage. Here Cruikshank depicts the many and assorted indigent suitors for the hand of the wealthy heiress. To the left of the dais are shown Lord Kilworth and William Wesley-Pole, later 4th Earl of Mornington a dissipated Anglo-Irish nobleman, who dueled over the courtship of Catherine. Kneeling at the foot of the steps we may also see the figure of Romeo Coates, unintentionally comic actor and 'improver' of Shakespeare included apparently 'not because of his pretensions, but his boasts and wishes'. Above him we see the fop and jobbing playwright, Sir Lumley Skeffington laying his poetic efforts at the feet of the heiress. On the right hand we see The Duke of Clarence, later William IV who by this point had debts of many hundreds of thousands of pounds holding back Baron-de-Geramb, a Spanish military adventurer and suspected Napoleonic spy who later became a Trappist monk where he used his position as procurator-general of that ancient order to defray his personal expenses. Above the Duke we see reproving the figure of Mrs Jordan, his 'common-law' wife with whom he had fathered many children at his retreat of Bushey Park. The farcical presentation of the situation belies it's tragic outcome. Perhaps cajoled by just such unkind insinuations as are repeated in this caricature Catherine would choose the worst-of-the-bunch, William Wesley-Pole, as her preferred suitor. William Wesley-Pole-Tylney-Long, as he became by Royal Licence in 1812, was an unredeemed rake and not only abused and impoverished his saintly young wife but also passed her a debilitating infection and caused her family seat at Wanstead House to be demolished and sold for salvage. After a short and unhappy marriage Catherine died at the age of only 35 after receiving a final brutal letter from her estranged husband, the contents of which apparently caused her to have some form of seizure. Frustrated in his efforts to gain custody of their son William, on whom the family fortune had devolved, William Pole Tylney-Long-Wellesley, 4th Earl of Mornington (the final name by which he was known) died in 1857 unwept, unhonoured and unsung if also unrepentant. His obituary in the Morning Star described him as "A spendthrift, a profligate, and a gambler in his youth, he became debauched in his manhood... redeemed by no single virtue, adorned by no single grace, his life gone out even without a flicker of repentance".£595 -
A late Arrival at Mother Wood’s
£350A late Arrival at Mother Wood’s
Hand-coloured etching by George Cruikshank, published by Mr George Humphrey. The scene depicts Caroline of Brunswick, the estranged wife of the newly ascended King George IV, saluting and addressing an adoring crowd from the balcony of Alderman Wood's residence in South Audley Street, London. Alderman Woods was a low-born hop merchant who's investments in a colouring agent for porter had supplied him with the means to further career in Radical politics. He achieved an almost unprecedented two-term mayoralty of the City of London where his opposition to the governments repressive domestic legislation and condemnation of the Peterloo massacre, as well as his perceived upstart vulgarity, made him a hate-figure for Tories and Loyalists. His Whig-Radicalism continued into his term as MP for the City of London and when, in 1820 he saw the chance to embarrass the King and his adherents by the return of his absent and unloved wife, he took it boldly. Woods persuaded Caroline of Brunswick to terminate the discreet ongoing negotiations for a settlement she had been engaged in with the King and instead return, splendidly and publicly, to the capital to assert her claim to be rightful Queen of England. Alderman Woods arranged for Caroline to be conveyed in an open carriage through the heart of London to his house on South Audley Street where she became the unlikely figure-head of Radical Whiggery in the metropolis. The diarist Charles Greville noted of the procession to the house on the 6th of June 1820: "The Queen arrived in London yesterday at seven o’clock… She travelled in an open landau, Alderman Wood sitting by her side and Lady Anne Hamilton and another woman opposite. Everybody was disgusted at the vulgarity of Wood in sitting in the place of honour, while the Duke of Hamilton’s sister was sitting backwards in the carriage". Caroline would spend the next two months at South Audley Street where the the great and the good of British radicalism paid her court amidst the crowds outside South Audley Street.£350 -
Persecution of the Saints.
£220Persecution of the Saints.
An original hand coloured etching by George Cruikshank.On 6 June 1820, Queen Caroline, estranged wife of George IV, returned from her exile on the continent, claiming her right to be crowned as Queen. The perceived harsh treatment of the Queen by the King and his Tory supporters caused her to become a figurehead for the political unrest that had been made worse by the Peterloo Massacre of 16 August 1819.In a desperate effort to rid himself of this turbulent wife George the IV ventured to have Caroline found guilty of adultery - the only legal justification for divorce at the time. All the while the King had preempitvely caused Caroline's name to be omitted from the Prayer for the Royal Family in churches throughout England.With tensions rising and both sides digging in over the contest the cause of Queen Caroline began to assume for the parties involved a symbolic and totemic significance. Queen Caroline, to the Whigs and Radicals represented injured honesty and probity in public life while her exclusion from the coronation and regal honours stood for the debasement of the constitution and the irregular, arbitrary and incompetent tyranny of the Tory loyalists. The situation was becoming so febrile that many feared political and factional violence was inevitable.Into this contest stepped William Wilberforce, the great independent MP and abolitionist campaigner. The small informal group of evangelical Christians who surrounded him in Parliament were known, perhaps mockingly, as The Saints. Wilberforce thought that by the force of his own unimpeachable integrity he could persuade Caroline to abdicate some of her rights as the Royal consort and thereby forestall what had begun to look like a revolutionary confrontation.Wilberforce attended at the Queen's residence on Portman Street in West London and presented a Motion for an Address to the Queen. He had been encouraged by Lord Brougham to believe that the Queen would accept the omission of her name from the public prayers. The Queen, standing in her rights and her honesty, flatly refused. Meanwhile the Radical London mob appears to have cajolled and roughed-up the sanctimonious delegation as they fled for their safety back to the House of Commons.As a result of the failure of Wilberforce’s attempts at mediation led to the trial of Queen Caroline and subsequent exclusion from the coronation ceremony.£220 -
A Muddy, a Sketch in Bond Street.
£220A Muddy, a Sketch in Bond Street.
A hand coloured etching by Isaac Cruikshank. A landau coach, nicknamed a 'Muddy' bespattered with grime, halts in Bond street, as two ladies look out of the window to chat with two fashionably dressed gentlemen. The coach driver is protected by a curtained seat, and two tall liveried attendants stand at the rear, eyeing the exchange archly. Before the rise and triumphant progress of Napoleon Bonaparte sparked a patriotic reaction in Britain, the circle of caricaturists and cartoonists working in London took their aim at the perceived voluptuary tendencies of the fashionable establishment in London. The French Wars and the Revolution had led to a period of social and economic hardship in Britain which seemingly left only the wealthy and well-connected untouched. Here Isaac Cruikshank takes aim at the folly and vice of a self-indulgent set. Isaac Cruikshank was the son of a dispossessed Jacobite customs inspector. After leaving Edinburgh for London in 1783 he sustained a precarious existence as an artist and caricaturist and, along with James Gillray and Thomas Rowlandson, contributed to what has been called 'the golden age of British caricature'. Isaac Cruikshank died of alcohol poisoning after a winning a drinking contest one evening in 1811. Two of his sons Isaac Robert Cruikshank, and George Cruikshank carried on the family tradition into the middle of the 19th Century.£220 -
A Match for the King’s Plate,
£180A Match for the King’s Plate,
A hand coloured etching by George Cruikshank commenting on the contest for seat of Westminster. George Lamb and John Cam Hobhouse, 1st Baron Broughton are shown astride a lamb, Sir Francis Burdett, 5th Baronet, on a fine but injured charger and Henry 'Orator' Hunt straggles behind on an old carthorse representing the 'Father of Reform' Major John Cartwright. All five figures are shown racing for the winning post at the gate of His Majesty's Treasury with an implication that the contest is for one for both power and political patronage while the twin devils or radical reform and universal suffrage inadvertently 'steal a ride' on the Baronet's charger. The election of 1818 was the first to be staged after the end of the Napoleonic wars and was to become both a distillation of the latent class-conflicts bubbling over in the United Kingdom, and a fore-warning of the growth of militant radicalism that was to envenom and fracture British politics in the early parts of the 19th Century. Sir Francis Burdett was the Radical incumbent in Westminster and yet was firmly set against the new Radicalism which was beginning to colour the politics of the manufacturing districts of the North. This extreme and confident movement for universal manhood suffrage and political reform was by now associated with Henry Hunt, Major Cartwright and the writer and journalist William Cobbett. Caught in a cleft stick by his need both to mollify the prosperous and respectable Westminster electorate and yet maintain his own character as a tribune of the plebeians and Radical leader, Burdett was in a classic political double-bind. To the eye of the exiled Cobbett the Baronet was a placeman and an establishment 'traitor' but to his Tory opponents and the wavering freeholders and burgesses of Westminster he was beginning to appear a dangerous extremist. The suicide of Sir Samuel Romilly, the second member for Westminster, in November 1818 threw the situation wide open and the resulting by-election became something of a national sensation.£180
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Printemps by Marc Chagall, Verve Vol. 1 / No. 3.
£800Printemps by Marc Chagall, Verve Vol. 1 / No. 3.
The Verve Review was a purposefully luxurious. It ran from 1937 to 1960, but with only 38 editions available, due to the high degree of design and editorial work dedicated to each issue. Each edition contained unique lithographic prints, commissioned by the editor, and each cover a double-page lithograph elaborated by one of the artists contained within. It was the brainchild of its editor Stratis Eleftheriades, a Greek National who moved to Paris in the early thirties to take part in the growing Modernist movement, writing under the name of Teriade.£800 -
Portraits Part II by Constantin Guys, Verve Vol 2 / No. 5-6.
£500Portraits Part II by Constantin Guys, Verve Vol 2 / No. 5-6.
The Verve Review was a purposefully luxurious. It ran from 1937 to 1960, but with only 38 editions available, due to the high degree of design and editorial work dedicated to each issue. Each edition contained unique lithographic prints, commissioned by the editor, and each cover a double-page lithograph elaborated by one of the artists contained within. It was the brainchild of its editor Stratis Eleftheriades, a Greek National who moved to Paris in the early thirties to take part in the growing Modernist movement, writing under the name of Teriade.£500 -
The Moon by André Masson, Verve Vol. 1 / No. 2.
£600The Moon by André Masson, Verve Vol. 1 / No. 2.
The Verve Review was a purposefully luxurious. It ran from 1937 to 1960, but with only 38 editions available, due to the high degree of design and editorial work dedicated to each issue. Each edition contained unique lithographic prints, commissioned by the editor, and each cover a double-page lithograph elaborated by one of the artists contained within. It was the brainchild of its editor Stratis Eleftheriades, a Greek National who moved to Paris in the early thirties to take part in the growing Modernist movement, writing under the name of Teriade.£600 -
Portraits Part I by Constantin Guys, Verve Vol 2 / No. 5-6.
£500Portraits Part I by Constantin Guys, Verve Vol 2 / No. 5-6.
The Verve Review was a purposefully luxurious. It ran from 1937 to 1960, but with only 38 editions available, due to the high degree of design and editorial work dedicated to each issue. Each edition contained unique lithographic prints, commissioned by the editor, and each cover a double-page lithograph elaborated by one of the artists contained within. It was the brainchild of its editor Stratis Eleftheriades, a Greek National who moved to Paris in the early thirties to take part in the growing Modernist movement, writing under the name of Teriade.£500