"The artist introduces us to the laboratory of a so-called alchemist. A roguish Jew and his familiar are busily engaged in the transmutation of metals; the servant, with a pair of long- nozzled bellows, is engaged in kindling the furnace, in which is a crucible; various retorts, alembics, and other paraphernalia of the 'black arts,' are scattered about, as well as a formula for 'changing lead into gold'; although the alchemists at best could only contrive to accomplish the reverse transmutation. Suggestive prints are hung on the walls of this chamber of mystery, such as the portrait of the notorious 'Count Cagliostro, discoverer of the Philosopher's Stone,' and the figure of the spurious 'Bottle Conjurer.' A military officer, in the next apartment, is turning his opportunities to more practical advantage by embracing, with a certain display of ardour, a pretty maiden who is nothing loth, the daughter, it appears, of the philosophically minded investigator."--Grego, J. Rowlandson the caricaturist
Alternative Title:
Searching for the philosophers stone
Description:
Title etched below image., Signed in image, lower left., Traces of burnished lettering in lower right corner of design., Not in the Catalogue of prints and drawings in the British Museum. Division I, political and personal satires., Temporary local subject terms: Hoaxes: allusion to bottle conjurer -- Male costume -- Furniture: chest -- Philosopher's stone., Temporary local Medical Library subject terms: Sex behavior., and Matted to 46 x 52 cm.
Publisher:
Pub. March 12, 1800, at R. Ackermans Repository of the Arts, N. 101 Strand
