Breaking-up [graphic]

"Scene in a school-room, pupils performing for admiring relations and friends. Eight little girls in party frocks do dance-steps while an agitated dancing-master leans angrily towards them, playing his fiddle. Other little girls watch from a bench (right). Boys sit in two tiers on an improvised platform from which they have stuck pens in the wig of an aged schoolmaster who is greeting a visitor. A dressed-up old woman hands a tray of refreshments to caricatured guests seated on the left, while four dandified men stand on the right. An ugly old woman snuffs a candle while she menaces the group of boys. On the wall are a sampler and drawings perpetrated by the pupils. There is a hanging gas chandelier."--British Museum online catalogue