Leaving off powder, or, A frugal family saving the guinea [graphic]

"A domestic interior. A fat and ugly citizen, wearing old-fashioned dress with a small unpowdered wig, stands on the hearth-rug (right), his back to the fire; he is meditatively reading the 'Gazette', headed: 'New Taxes', and 'Bankru[pts]', his left hand plunged in his breeches pocket. Behind him on the chimney-piece is a pair of scales for weighing guineas (see BMSat 5128). His wife, bald-headed, ugly, and stout, leans back in an arm-chair, her hands raised in protest at an unpowdered wig which a grotesquely thin and ragged French hairdresser (left) proffers obsequiously. A fashionably dressed young man with cropped hair looks with imbecile surprise at his reflection in an oval mirror over the chimney-piece. His mouth is half-covered by his swathed neckcloth, he wears a short spencer (see BMSat 8192) over a sparrow-tail coat, and half-boots. A young woman with over-dressed but unpowdered (red) hair looks with dismay at her reflection in a mirror which she has snatched from the wall. On the wall is an oval bust portrait of 'Charles 2d', his tiny head framed in an immense powdered wig."--British Museum online catalogue