At Church
This is one half of a paired set of portraits of two of the society women Gillray loved to satirize. This one shows the Honorable Mrs. Albinia Hobart asleep in her pew at church. Prints satirizing the practice of nodding off during services can be traced at least as far back as Hogarth, whose Sleeping Congregation (1736) contains not one but seven sleeping congregants. In this case, the somnolence of Mrs. Hobart can stand alone as a satiric statement based on the incongruity with its title. But it gains addtional strength when contrasted with the attentiveness of her friend, Lady Cecilia Johnston, in the companion print, At the Opera. It seems that society women are perfectly capable of staying awake and attentive for performances at the opera but not for services at church.
© Trustees of the British Museum
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Albinia Hobart was born with the proverbial silver spoon in her mouth as the daughter of Lord Vere Bertie and heiress Anne Casey, in due course inheriting all their money and estates. Then she married money and ultimately title in the person of George Hobart who became the 3rd Earl of Buckinghamshire in 1793 after the death of his half-brother. Her size, extravagance, gambling habits, and love of theatrics made her a natural gift for caricaturists. Gillray portrayed her at least fourteen times over the course of his career, beginning with La Belle Assemblée in 1787, but perhaps most famously as the sphere in A Sphere, Projecting Against a Plane in 1792.
But in the case of At Church, Gillray's contribution was probably no more than etching the drawing of an amateur. The forehead, nose, lips, and chin all differ from the image of Mrs. Hobart that Gillray had perfected and which can be seen in Le Derniere Ressource published literally the day before, October 3, 1791.
© Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University
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Sources and Reading
- Commentary from the British Museum on At Church.
- "Albinia Hobart," Wikipedia
- Thomas Wright and Joseph Grego, The Works of James Gillray, the Caricaturist; With the History of His Life and Times p. 136.
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