The enraged son of Mars and timid tonsor [graphic]

"The interior of a barber's shop, a ramshackle room with a raftered ceiling. An elderly military officer, seated in the middle of the room between the barber and his wife, causes general dismay; he points to a gash on his cheek and shakes his fist at the barber who flinches back, razor in hand. The barber's wife, bending over the customer with a bowl of soap-suds, is terrified. The assistant, his own hair in curl-papers, trims the hair of a customer (right), holding a bowl on his head. At a table (left) a man washes, stanching his head. Water is supplied from the tap of a bucket on a shelf above the basin. Part of the table serves as dressing-table; on this a monkey sits before the mirror, lathering its head. On a high shelf (right) are wig-boxes and wig-blocks; the latter have inscriptions characterizing their (carved) features, and each having its appropriate wig: 'Clarkes Block', 'Parsons Block', 'Docter's Block', 'Lawyers Block'. On the back wall are a roller-towel and four prints: Absalom hanging from a tree while his horse gallops off, inscribed: 'Oh Absolom My Son My Son--hadst thou Wore a Wig this neer . . .' ; two profile heads, nose to nose, roughly resembling Rowlandson's 'Mock Turtle' [British Museum Satires No. 11639]; a narrow broadside headed by a gibbet, such as were sold in London on execution days; a bewigged caricature head."--British Museum online catalogue