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Category Archives: Satirical prints
The spiritual Quixote
Among Douce’s satirical prints, there is a full set of caricatures of clerics after designs by George Moutard (or Murgatroyd) Woodward (1760?-1809). When Mary Dorothy George catalogued the five prints from the series in the collection of the British Museum, … Continue reading
Posted in Literature, Prints, Religion, Satirical prints
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The Prodigal Son Sifted
Despite their various nationalities and the different periods in which they lived, the authors of the satirical prints collected by Douce seemed to share their belief that ‘things ain’t what they used to be’. When seen together, however, the prints … Continue reading
Posted in Broadsides, Popular prints, Prints, Satirical prints
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Douce and Flaxman
Douce counted the artist John Flaxman (1755-1826) among his friends: numerous gifts from the sculptor are recorded in his Collecta and Flaxman’s Compositions from the Tragedies of Aeschylus (1795) was one of the books bequeathed by Douce to the Bodleian. … Continue reading
Posted in Literature, Prints, Satirical prints
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Student life
Sports and various outdoor activities seem like an appropriate subject for a post, now that we have 123 days to go before the London Olympics start, Hilary term has just ended, and the first days of Spring have brought sun … Continue reading
Posted in Everyday life, Games, History of printmaking, Prints, Satirical prints, Sports
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Dickens Year
We are in Dickens Year: on 7 February, we will be celebrating the 200th anniversary of his birth. A copy of Douce’s The Dance of Death bearing the bookplate of Charles Dickens can be found in the Special Collections of … Continue reading
Posted in Dance of Death, Literature, Lithography, Prints, Satirical prints
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Knavery stalks through the land
Douce’s interest in images of fools and jesters was not limited to his research for the ‘Dissertation on the Clowns and Fools of Shakspeare’, published as part of his Illustrations of Shakespeare and of ancient manners (London, 1807). Plates like … Continue reading
Posted in Fools, Letters, Satirical prints
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Modern life is rubbish
The quadrille-craze mentioned in my previous post on William Hawkes Smith’s music-sheet was also one of the subjects depicted by George and Isaac Robert Cruikshank in their illustrations to Pierce Egan’s Life in London (1821). In Egan’s social comedy, the … Continue reading
Posted in Broadsides, Letters, London, Satirical prints
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Quadrilling
This music-sheet kept among Douce’s prints on dancing is not just an example of popular music in the age of bonnets, but also a clever and mildly amusing satire on contemporary mores: Under the title Quadrille; a favourite song, the … Continue reading
Posted in Fashion, Lithography, Music, Satirical prints
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Baron Munchausen
Reading Francis Douce’s correspondence sometimes feels like playing six degrees of separation. Douce, for instance, knew Twiss, whose friend Alexander Jardine corresponded with Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos, one of Goya’s patrons. Twiss’s letters are a particularly rich source of information … Continue reading
Posted in History of printmaking, Letters, Satirical prints
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