A scene in an artist's studio lit from an attic window (left). Four connoisseurs are grouped round a large canvas on an easel: an Apollo with a sheaf of arrows, head turned in profile to the left. The model is a tall black man in the pose of the Apollo but with very different features, the left hand holding the stick of a broom which supports the pose. A fifth connoisseur reaches up to alter the position of the model's head. The artist stands beside his canvas facing the invaders, the left hand, holding palette and brushes, rests on the canvas; he sucks his mahl-stick with a gloomy scowl. On the extreme right a cat sits in a cradle, behind which an alarmed little boy hides. The artist's wife, with an infant in her arms, faces the fire with her back to the visitors whose unwelcome intrusion is apparent. Behind is a bed with drawn curtains. Three casts from the antique decorate the bare room. The model's coat and hat lie on the ground (right). On the far left in the foreground a dog urinates against two canvases leaning against the wall
Alternative Title:
Assemblée des connisseurs
Description:
Titles in English and French etched below image. and Imperfect; sheet trimmed within plate mark with loss of all text from bottom edge. Missing text supplied from impression in the British Museum.
"Bottom sits in an arm-chair directed to the left, wearing spectacles on his ass's forehead. In his right hand is a piece of charcoal in a holder, in his left is a paper, which he is studying. Above his head is etched 'Apollo'. On the left stands a man looking over Bottom's shoulder, his fists clenched. Behind (right) two students (seated) draw from the antique, a nude male statue on a pedestal just above the level of their heads."--British Museum online catalogue
Description:
Title from caption below image, a line from a speech by the character Quince, from Shakespeare's A midsummer night's dream, iii.1.121., Printmaker from British Museum catalogue., Six lines of verse below title: "W_hen Phidias or Raph'el shall chuse to repair, I_ncog to our fine modern Artists' fam'd School, L_ost in wonder to see stuck in Genius's Chair T_he Block which now fills it) a formal old Fool. O_ ff again with this sneering Remark they will go, N_o marvel your Pupils old Friend are so so". JP.", and Initial letters of each line form word 'Wilton.'
Publisher:
Pubd. Jany 1, 1794, by S.W. Fores, No. 3 Piccadilly
Subject (Name):
Wilton, Joseph, 1722-1803, Richards, John Inigo, 1731-1810, Phidias, approximately 500 B.C.-approximately 430 B.C., Raphael, 1483-1520., Royal Academy of Arts (Great Britain), and Apollo (Deity)
Subject (Topic):
Artists' materials, Artists' models, and Sculptors
Title from item., Below title are eight lines of verse in two columns, signed R.G. Sr. D.L.: Flore, Thisbe! Lucresse & Porcie & Cypris ..., Engraved below verses: Omnia vincit amor & nos Cedamus amori. Virgil., Watermark upper center of sheet., and Written in ink along right plate line, top: 155. Lower left corner of plate mark: 74. On verso, lower left: 141[?]
