"A pretty young wife sits beside an aged doting and rich husband, reading to him. He delightedly contemplates his glass, which is being filled by Death, who leans over a screen. The girl's left hand is held by a young officer who leans through the window (right)."--British Museum online catalogue
Alternative Title:
Honeymoon and When the old fool has drank his wine and gone to rest, I will be thine
Description:
Title from British Museum catalogue, taken from the heading to the printed page opposite the plate in The English dance of death., Couplet etched below image: When the old fool has drank his wine / and gone to rest, I will be thine., Attributed to Rowlandson in the British Museum catalogue., Sheet trimmed within plate mark with loss of imprint from top margin and verses from bottom margin. Missing text supplied from impression in the British Museum., Plate from: Combe, W. The English dance of death. London : Published at R. Ackermann's Repository of Arts ..., 1815-1816, v. 1, opposite page 106., and Temporary local Medical Library subject terms: Marriage & married life -- Skeleton as Death.
Publisher:
Pub. Augt. 1, 1814, by R. Ackermann's, 101 Strand
Subject (Name):
Combe, William, 1742-1823.
Subject (Topic):
Dance of death, Death (Personification), Marriage, Skeletons, Courtship, Adultery, Military officers, British, Eating & drinking, Alcoholic beverages, Windows, Interiors, Stringed instruments, Books, Dogs, Fireplaces, and Screens
A scene in a chamber with the end of canopy bed visible in the background, left. A woman in her undergarments, a candlestick in the foreground positioned suggestively between her legs, reaches out to cover her husband's one good eye as he walks through the front door; behind her, her lover escapes undetected with his clothes over his arm. Outside, through the open door, a servant can be seen leading a horse, with a barn across the yard. To the right of the door, a chamber pot sits on a ladder-back chair with a hat and a fiddle hanging off pegs on the wall above
Alternative Title:
Wife's dream
Description:
Title devised by cataloger., Signed by the artist in lower right., Date supplied by cataloger., and With an extensive inscription on verso, in an unidentified hand, that might represent the original idea for this drawing that was sent to Rowlandson: A woman being catched in her Bedchamber with her Paramour by her husband who had but one Eye. She ran to him, crying aloud that she dream he saw with both’ and therefore, I must know," added the artful Baggage "whether my Dream be fulfill’d - saying this she shut his good Eye which gave her Gallant an opportunity of slipping away unperceived by her husband.