An African woman known as 'Sartje' or the Hottentot Venus stands, left, in profile, a smoking pipe in her mouth and tall staff in her right hand. She has an enormous posterior and stands nude except for a pair of garters around her calves, a thin girdle round her waist, a beaded headdress and beaded necklace. Grenville stands behind her but looks back over his shoulder at her. Dressed in formal court dress, he too is depicted with an enormous posterior. Grenville says: Well I never expected Broad Bottoms from Africa! but one should never dispair! Mind Sherry dont let your Fireey nose touch the Venus for if theres any conbustibls about her we shall be blown up!!" In his pocket is a paper inscribed Chaselor [sic]. Between them, half-kneeling, Sheridan measures her bottom using a compass and answers: I shall be carefull your Lordship! but such a spanker it beats your Lordship's hollow."
Description:
Title from item/, Artist and imprint information based on a close copy with same title and same dialogue with misspellings. Cf. British Museum catalogue, no. 11578., Sheet trimmed within plate mark., Watermark: J Whatman Turkey Mill., and Collector's stamp on verso: half-length raised figure of fox with initials MW below.
Publisher:
Walker Cornhill?
Subject (Name):
Baartman, Sarah, Grenville, William Wyndham Grenville, Baron, 1759-1834, Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, 1751-1816, and Great Britain. Court of Chancery
Subject (Topic):
Officials and employees, Khoikhoi (African people), Africans, and England
"Frontispiece from 'Metropolitan Grievances; or, a serio-comic glance at minor mischiefs in London and its Vicinity', 1812. A crowded street scene, with the corner of a tripe-butcher's on the right: 'Gilbert. Gall Tripem[an]', a lean-to shop, in which the butcher bargains over sheeps' trotters and offal with an elderly woman. Outside this is a pavement along which a little boy bowls a hoop between the legs of an elderly lady on the extreme right who totters on high-heeled shoes, having dropped a lap-dog from her muff. A little chimney-sweep is much amused. Above the butcher's a woman at a window empties a pan: the contents splash on to the pent-house roof and pour through a spout over the white stockings of a fashionably dressed passer-by who registers horror, holding up an eyeglass. The stream splashes the unconscious woman who chaffers with the tripe-man. A street-lamp projecting from the corner of the house is broken. Over the uneven cobbles an old woman pushes a barrow of cat's-meat, shrieking her wares; two dogs bark at the barrow, a cat miaows. Near her stands a ragged, bare-legged man, with grievously twisted and misshapen legs (showing the effects of rickets); he sells 'The Last Dying Sp[eech] . . .', with a print of bodies on a gibbet, shouting from a cavernous mouth in a subhuman face. Behind him a jovial crossing-sweeper plies his broom. On the left is a caricature shop, the window-panes filled with prints, among which one of 'the Hottentot Venus', Saartjie Baartman, see No. 11577, &c., is conspicuous. There are also large comic heads. A fashionably dressed woman leaves the shop, holding her nose (assailed by the cat's-meat). Four men gaze at the window; one is a countryman whose pocket is being picked. Heavy flower-pots are about to fall on their heads from a projecting ledge. A woman leans from a first-floor window trying vainly to stop the fall, and letting her watering-pot discharge its contents on the still unconscious window-gazers. On the wall is the disk of the 'Sun' Fire Office, with the date '1812'. The next house is a small gin-shop with a bunch of grapes for its sign and the inscription '. . Arsnic--Best Cordial Gin'. Three dram-drinkers stand at the door. The last house, a corner one, is dilapidated and shored up with a beam. The ground floor belongs to 'D. Dip Tallow Chandler'; against the window is a stall or bulk. The top floor is that of 'Ling--Dyer &c'; a pole projects from a window with dyed garments and a length of material hanging out to dry. On the corner of the house is the notice: 'F P 20 Ft'. In the background the dome of St. Paul's rises above the roofs of houses in the middle distance."--British Museum online catalogue
Description:
Title from caption below image., Date based on information from the British Museum catalogue., and Sheet trimmed within plate mark.
Publisher:
Pub. G. Smeeton, 139 St. Martin's Lane
Subject (Geographic):
England and London.
Subject (Name):
Baartman, Sarah,
Subject (Topic):
Butchers, Chimney sweeps, City & town life, People with disabilities, and Window displays
Caricature of a young surgeon undergoing questioning by his peers. A satire on the Royal College of Surgeons, London and "Plate from the 'Scourge', ii. 263 (second state). Members of the Court of Examiners of the Royal College of Surgeons sit on the outer side of a horse-shoe table, four on each side of the Master, who sits in a raised chair, wearing a gown, bands, and hat. On the table before him are a skull and bone. The examinee, trembling and insignificant, stands on the extreme left, facing a man who has risen from his chair to say angrily, "Describe, the Organs of Hearing"; the latter's neighbour listens intently through an ear-trumpet. The next Examiner sleeps with folded arms; next, and on the Master's right, is a man turning his back on the Master and holding his nose while he studies a book: 'Question upon Wind I Suppose a man was to . . . What w . . . you . . .' The aged and toothless Master (Sir Charles Blicke, 1745-1815) listens with senile intensity through an ear-trumpet. On his left two Scots, ungainly fellows wearing tartan, are absorbed in conversation; one says: "you paid too dear for it brother Sergeant," the other takes snuff from a mull. Next is a fat man with swathed gouty legs; crutches lie on the ground beside him; he has a paper 'THH [sic] COW POX CRONICLE', suggesting that he is Jenner (not a surgeon). He has a pen in his mouth, spectacles on forehead, and looks sideways at his neighbour, a lean old man who is intently counting piles of coin. In the foreground is a trough containing books; a man stands near it holding a large volume and looking towards examiner and examinee. A man leaves the room (right) looking over his shoulder with shocked distress, and exclaiming "Oh!" In his pocket is a paper: 'A Peter on the Gravel'. The Master's chair is decorated with skulls; from its back projects a striped pole supporting a skull which serves as a wig-block, emblem of the old connexion between surgeons and barbers, see No. 9092, &c. Under the chair are money-bags, one inscribed '£50', the other 'For Shirt'. Behind the chair are two niches or alcoves in each of which a skeleton is suspended by the neck from a rope; one (left) is 'Govenor [sic] Wall' [see No. 9845], the other 'Lady Brownrigg'. These are symmetrically flanked by four pictures: [1] a prizefight between a black pugilist and a skeleton at which the Master of the College presides, standing before his chair. [2] Saartjie Baartman, 'the Hottentot Venus', see No. 11577, &c., stands in profile to the right while 'Nobody', a man whose legs are jointed to his shoulders as in No. 12438, &c., points with amusement at her huge posterior. [3] A young woman without arms or legs, placed on a bergere, is inspected by an ugly man, who points at her. [4] A brazen cow (or golden calf) is supported on a garlanded pillar on whose base is a crown; round this men, apparently surgeons, dance gleefully, holding hands in a ring. On the extreme left of the wall is an ornate clock, showing that the time is eleven. It is topped by a grinning figure of Time holding an hourglass. On the ground is a paper: 'At the sign of the Cow's Head Lincolns Inn Feilds'."--British Museum online catalogue
Description:
Title etched below image., Plate from: The Scourge, or, Monthly expositor of imposture and folly. London: W. Jones, v. 2 (October 1811), page 263., and Temporary local Medical Library subject terms: Examination for license -- Vaccination controversy.
Publisher:
Pubd. October 1st, 1811, by M. Jones, 5 Newgate Strt
Subject (Name):
Blicke, Charles, Sir, 1745-1815, Blizard, William, Sir, 1743-1835., Earle, James, Sir, 1755-1817., Home, Everard, Sir, 1756-1832, Dundas, David, Sir, 1735?-1820., Biffin, Sarah, 1784-1850., Baartman, Sarah, Jenner, Edward, 1749-1823, Wall, Joseph, 1737-1802., Brownrigg, Elizabeth, 1720?-1767., and Royal College of Surgeons in London.
Subject (Topic):
Medicine and art, Physicians, Questioning, Surgery, Surgeons, Table, Deafness, Gout, Medical students, and Hearing aids
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
