Blackberrying [graphic]

Description

Title: Blackberrying [graphic]
Creator: Hunt, Charles, active 1825-1857, printmaker
Contributor: Summers, William, active 1825-1838, artist.
T. C. Lewis and Co., publisher.
Published / Created: [before 1860]
Publication Place: London
Publisher: T.C. Lewis & Co., 96 Cheapside, London
Abstract: A scene with a group of mourners in a landscape, a palm tree to the left with a monkey watching and pointing to the drama. A man standing to the right reads from a book; three other figures, another man and a woman with a child on her back weep as they watch two men lower the deceased into the grave. The man on the right says, "How precious pale he look in de face." The other man holding the other end of the stretcher says, "Aye-Aye, him be no Moor."
Description: Title etched below image.
Later state of a plate first published by Gabriel Shire Tregear in 1834, the year in which the Slavery Abolition Act came into force. The original print was one of twenty caricatures with the series title 'Tregear's Black Jokes'. The prints developed the theme of the earlier 'Life in Philadelphia' caricatures (of which Tregear published copies), lampooning the social aspirations of Philadelphia's black population. After Tregear's death, the plates for 'Tregear's Black Jokes' passed to his former shopman Thomas Crump Lewis (1808-81), whose publication line is on this later state. The three mentions of Tregear's name on the plate have either been changed to Lewis's or simply effaced.
Dated 1860 by the Library of Congress, but Hickman suggests that the prints were issued before that date.
"Catalogue of prints"--Etched in lower right corner.
Sheet trimmed to plate mark.
Provenance: Grosvenor Prints; September 2023.
Extent: 1 print : sheet 23 x 31 cm.
Extent of Digitization: This object has been completely digitized.
Language: English