A French family [graphic]

"A companion print to BMSat 9670. In a squalid room French dancers practise to a fiddle played by an older man (right) who dances as he plays. The parents of the four children dance, facing each other. She is elegant, buxom, with an elaborate feathered coiffure. He is lean, wearing a tattered but well-fitting coat over bare legs, with sleeve-ruffles (cf. the old gibe that the Frenchman wore ruffles but no shirt). He wears a toupee wig with a long queue. A boy and girl, both with hair elaborately dressed, dance together more vigorously. A little girl (right) with bare legs practises the first position, heels together. On the left a boy plays the pipe and tabor to two dogs, one wearing cloak and hat, whom he is teaching to dance. His chair is the only furniture except for a truckle-bed (left) turned up to the wall and a much-tilted wall-mirror (right). A lean cat has climbed to a small cupboard recessed in the wall near the ceiling and licks a stoppered bottle. The cupboard contains a coffee-pot, a covered jar, &c. A print of two clumsy peasant dancers is pinned to the wall, from which plaster has flaked. All practise with serious concentration."--British Museum online catalogue