"From the bustle and life visible on all sides it would seem that the period is fair-time, when the rustics and agricultural population of the vicinity in general flock into the town, holiday-making. A travelling mountebank has established his theatre in the market place; the person of the ingenious charlatan is decked out in a fine court dress, with bag wig, powder, sword, and laced hat complete, the better to excite the respect of his audience; he is holding forth on the marvellous properties ascribed to the nostrums which he is seeking to palm off on the simple villagers as wonder-working elixirs; while his attendants, Merry Andrew and Jack Pudding, are going through their share of the performance. One branch of the mountebank physician's profession was the drawing of teeth; an unfortunate sufferer is submitting himself to the hands of the empiric's assistant. The rural audience is stolidly contemplating the antics of the party, without being particularly moved by Dr. Botherum's imposing eloquence, these vagabond scamps being frequently clever rogues, blessed with an inexhaustible fund of bewildering oratory, and witty repartee at glib command. Leaving the quack, we find plentiful and suggestive materials to employ the humourist's skilful graver scattered around. In the centre, a scene of jealousy is displayed; the beguilements of a portly butcher are prevailing against the assumed privileges of a slip-shod tailor, who is seemingly tempted to have recourse to his sheers, to cut the amorous entanglement summarily asunder. On the left, the promiscuous and greedy feeding associated with 'fairings,' is going busily forward, and on the opposite side are exhibited all the drolleries which can be got out of a Jew pedlar, his pack, the diversified actions of customers he is trying to tempt with his wares, and the bargains for finery into which the fair and softer sex are vainly trying to beguile the cunning Hebrew on their own accounts. It seems probable that Rowlandson in his print of Doctor Botherum may have had a certain Doctor Bossy in his eye, a German practitioner of considerable skill, who enjoyed a comfortable private practice, said to have been the last of the respectable charlatans who exhibited in the British metropolis. This benevolent empiric, as Angelo informs us, dispensed medicines and practised the healing art, publicly and gratuitously on a stage, his booth being erected weekly in the midst of Covent-Garden Market, where the mountebank, handsomely dressed and wearing a gold-laced cocked hat, arrived in his chariot with a liveried servant behind. According to the old custom, the itinerant quack-doctor, with his attendant gang, was as constant a visitor at every market-place as the pedlar with his pack."--Grego
Description:
Title etched below image., Attributed to Rowlandson by Grego., Sheet trimmed within plate mark., Twelve lines of verse below image, six on either side of title: High o'er the gaping crowd, on market day, while Andrew drolls the blockheads pence away ..., Not in the Catalogue of prints and drawings in the British Museum. Division I, political and personal satires., Temporary local Medical Library subject terms: Mountebanks -- Tooth Extraction -- Dr. Bossey., and 1 print : aquatint and etching, hand-colored ; sheet 373 x 433 mm.
Publisher:
Pubd. 6 March 1800 at R. Ackermann's Repository of the Arts, 101 Strand
Subject (Topic):
Quacks and quackery, Teeth, Extraction, Jews, City & town life, Plazas, Medicine shows, Audiences, Crowds, Peddlers, and Butchers
"View looking across the north side of the square; part of the circular garden area surrounded by iron railings on the right, elegantly dressed figures and carriages on street"--British Museum online catalogue
Description:
Title from caption below image., Printmaker from British Museum online catalogue., Sheet trimmed within plate mark., Plate from: A picturesque tour through the cities of London and Westminster. London: T. Malton, 1792 [i.e. 1802]., and Mounted to 30 x 43 cm.
"View of the west front of Harewood House in Hanover Square; elegantly dressed figures and carriages in street"--British Museum online catalogue
Description:
Title from caption below image., Printmaker from British Museum online catalogue., Sheet trimmed within plate mark., Plate from: A picturesque tour through the cities of London and Westminster. London: T. Malton, 1792 [i.e. 1802]., and "Pl. 90"--Below imprint.
"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., 1 print : aquatint with etching, hand-colored ; sheet 25.8 x 32.1 cm., and Imperfect; sheet trimmed within plate mark with loss of imprint from lower left. The title is also separated from the rest of the sheet, having been trimmed away and then mounted beneath the design.
Publisher:
Pub. March 12, 1800, at R. Ackermans Repository of the Arts, N. 101 Strand
"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
"One of a set of four hunting-scenes with punning titles, with the same signatures and imprint; they have pleasant landscape backgrounds, with clouds. A rider (left) has been flung over his horse's head and lies on his face screaming; the horse falls into a deep ditch edged by a fence (right). From one pocket spout the contents of a bottle of wine, from the other two hounds are tugging a cold chicken, other hounds are making with fierce intentness towards the chicken. A second rider just behind the fence pulls up his horse in alarm, a third in the background leaps over fence and ditch. See BMSats 9589-91; cf. BMSat 9592, &c."--British Museum online catalogue
Description:
Title etched below image., Signed by Brownlow North using an artist's device: compass pointing to the north., One of a set of four plates on huntsmens' skills., Temporary local subject terms: Horsemanship -- Huntsmen -- Food: chicken -- Beverage: wine -- Hounds., and Window mounted to 31 x 42 cm.
Publisher:
Publish'd April 8th, 1800, by H. Humphrey, No. 27 St. James's Street, London
"A rider leans back in the saddle tugging hard at his rein; he is riding over the hounds which are yelping and squealing. Behind (right) a huntsman gallops up, shouting at the man and the hounds."--British Museum online catalogue
Description:
Title etched below image., Signed by Brownlow North using an artist's device: compass pointing to the north., One of a set of four plates on huntmen's skills., Temporary local subject terms: Horsemanship -- Huntsmen -- Hounds., and Window mounted to 32 x 42 cm.
Publisher:
Publish'd April 8th, 1800, by Hh. Humphrey, No. 27 St. James's Street, London
"Three riders are being violently thrown off their horses, in grotesque attitudes, by the hounds who have caused two horses to fall and the third to rear."--British Museum online catalogue
Description:
Title etched below image., Signed by Brownlow North using an artist's device: compass pointing to the north., One of a set of four plates on huntsmens' skills., Temporary local subject terms: Horsemanship -- Huntsmen -- Hounds., and Window mounted to 32 x 43 cm.
Publisher:
Publish'd April 8th, 1800, by H. Humphrey, No. 27 St. James's Street, London
"A bogus wizard stands raising his wand while a grotesque figure, in answer, snorting fire, emerges in clouds of smoke from a rectangular aperture in the floor (left), dagger in one hand, cup of 'poison' in the other. The dupe, an ugly man in old-fashioned dress, watches terror-struck, while a woman picks his pocket from behind a curtain. A magic circle, with toad, skull, &c, a cat, a book with cabalistic signs, a stuffed crocodile suspended from the ceiling, give the required atmosphere."--British Museum online catalogue
Alternative Title:
Raising the devil
Description:
Title etched below image., Temporary local Medical Library subject terms: Devils & demons -- Cabalism., 1 print : etching and aquatint ; plate mark 29.7 x 34.6 cm., and Hand-colored.
Publisher:
Pubd. March 12, 1800, by R. Ackerman, No. 101 Strand
"A bogus wizard stands raising his wand while a grotesque figure, in answer, snorting fire, emerges in clouds of smoke from a rectangular aperture in the floor (left), dagger in one hand, cup of 'poison' in the other. The dupe, an ugly man in old-fashioned dress, watches terror-struck, while a woman picks his pocket from behind a curtain. A magic circle, with toad, skull, &c, a cat, a book with cabalistic signs, a stuffed crocodile suspended from the ceiling, give the required atmosphere."--British Museum online catalogue
Alternative Title:
Raising the devil
Description:
Title etched below image. and Temporary local Medical Library subject terms: Devils & demons -- Cabalism.
Publisher:
Pubd. March 12, 1800, by R. Ackerman, No. 101 Strand
