A racist and complex print purports to show a dinner held at the African Institution, becoming increasingly drunken and debauched as the evening progresses. Cruikshank employs many common 19th-century racist stereotypes of black people - drunkenness, aggressiveness, and sexual promiscuity - and lampoons the idea that black people could aspire to behave like white people. In the print, the white abolitionists are portrayed as unsuspecting and bewildered innocents who find themselves entirely out of their depth. Cruikshank seems to suggest that their association with black people has corrupted them - that they are being 'uncivilised' rather than black people becoming 'civilised'. Meanwhile, the idea of relationships between races is ridiculed. Many familiar and important figures are represented. Abolitionists like Wilberforce, Stephen and Macaulay appear next to the street entertainer Billy Waters and the radical Robert Wedderburn ... See a full description at Royal Museums Greenwich online catalogue and A design based on Gillray's 'The Union Club' with the roistering fraternizers being English and negroes, in place of English and Irish. The chairman's raised throne with its canopy is on the extreme left, at the head of the table which extends to the right across the design. The throne is an infant's chair, or commode, supported on a round tray based on two casks, one above the other. Wilberforce has risen from the chair, so far as the front bar will permit, his chairman's hammer held between flexed knees ..."--British Museum online catalogue
Description:
Title etched below image. and Place of publication transposed from end of publisher's statement.
Publisher:
Pud. July 19th 1819 by G. Humphrey, 27 St. James's Street
Subject (Geographic):
Great Britain. and Great Britain
Subject (Name):
Baartman, Sarah., Henri Christophe, King of Haiti, 1767-1820, Lyon, G. F. 1795-1832. (George Francis),, Macaulay, Zachary, 1768-1838, Marryat, Joseph, 1757-1824., Smith, William, 1756-1835., Stoddart, John, 1773-1856., Stephen, James, 1758-1832., Parr, Samuel, 1747-1825., Wedderburn, R. (Robert), Wilberforce, William, 1759-1833, and Anti-slavery Society (Great Britain)
Subject (Topic):
Antislavery movements, Political satire, English, Politics and government, Caricature, Clubs, Ethnic stereotypes, Intoxication, and Racism
George Cruikshank's water colour drawings to Oliver Twist, Twenty-five water-colour drawings, and Water colour drawings to Oliver Twist
Description:
"A portfolio of 26 collotypes, printed in color, which reproduce the drawings made in 1866 by Cruikshank ... it is known that these prints were published by Chapman and Hall in 1895"--Podeschi. and Bookplate of Clara B. and Edward C. Daoust. Bookseller's label: Harry F. Marks, bookseller, 107 Broadway, N.Y.C.
Publisher:
Chapman and Hall,
Subject (Name):
Daoust, Clara B.--Bookplate, Daoust, Edward C.--Bookplate, Dickens, Charles,--1812-1870.--Oliver Twist, and Dickens, Charles,--1812-1870--Illustrations
"A set of 24 plates for Oliver Twist, being untrimmed etchings apparently produced for issue in Bentley's miscellany but which escaped that use"--Podeschi.
Publisher:
Richard Bentley,
Subject (Name):
Dickens, Charles,--1812-1870.--Oliver Twist. and Dickens, Charles,--1812-1870--Illustrations.
