A Connoisseur Examining a Cooper
This is one of a series of highly finished portraits of the royal family, including Temperance Enjoying a Frugal Meal and A Voluptuary under the Horrors of Digestion (all in 1792) in which Gillray introduces the kind of elaborate stippling usually reserved for fine art prints into a clearly satirical environment. These prints are probably Gillray's closest approach to Hogarth, where the figures themselves are only slightly caricatured, and the burden of the satire is carried by the incidental details of the print.
© Trustees of the British Museum
Here Gillray shows a barely caricatured George III squinting at a miniature of the infamous leader of the Puritan Revolution, Oliver Cromwell painted by Samuel Cooper. The king is finely dressed and holds a large gold plated candlestick for light. But the elaborate candlestick supports scarcely an inch of candle in a "save-all" specifically designed for the thrifty (or simply parsimonious) to ensure that every last bit of the candle is used.
Appearing in June of 1792 after the King of Sweden had been killed in March and as the threat to the monarchy in France was becoming more and more apparent, this print satirizes the King's well-known frugality but it may also suggest an obliviousness to the potential dangers of his own situation. George can now examine Cromwell in miniature as a connoisseur regards an art object. But like that of the candle, George's time may be running short. And he may soon find himself confronting revolutionists like Cromwell face to face.
Gillray's position on that possibility is not apparent in this print.
Sources and Reading
- Commentary from the British Museum on A Connoisseur Examining a Cooper
- Draper Hill, Mr. Gillray The Caricaturist, 1965
- Draper Hill, The Satirical Etchings of James Gillray, 1976, #28
- "George III of the United Kingdom," Wikipedia
- "Samuel Cooper," Wikipedia
- Thomas Wright and R.H. Evans, Historical and Descriptive Account of the Caricatures of James Gillray #84
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