Flemish Characters

As it stands now, this title represents a pair of prints depicting typical scenes of life in Holland in 1793. The first of the pair shows a group of Catholic school girls as they file into a chapel to attend morning Mass. They are overseen by a fat school mistress, while a well-dressed family, a priest, and trio of nuns look on awaiting their turn to enter.

The second print shows the town market place featuring a vendor selling spins in a lively game of chance, a group of black robed clerics or academics in discussion, a town crier making his announcements, and a platoon of British troops drilling in the background.

Versions of both prints were originally etched on a single untitled plate, proofs from which can be found at the British Museum and the Morgan Library. In that wonderfully composed and balanced version, the chapel scene is shown above and the market scene below.

But some time after the proof shown above was taken, and perhaps to take better advantage of the intense interest in all things Dutch in 1793, it appears that Gillray thought (or was persuaded to think) that he could cut this unusually sized plate (31.1 x 36.4 cm) in two and then append some additional copper to make two prints of a more standard size (23.0 x 36.5). It didn't work; the "finished" pair of prints reveals a clearly visble line across the upper third of the design where the new copper had been joined to the old.

Given the amount of time and effort he had devoted to the project (see my commentary on the single plate version), Gillray must have been severely disappointed with the result. And that may explain why the prints were never published during Gillray's lifetime. It was not until 1822 that Hannah Humphrey's nephew George published the pair of prints we now know as Flemish Characters. But we can be glad that he did. Even with the visible join lines, the two-print versions are still strikingly beautiful and a testment to Gillray's sympathies with Dutch genre scenes.

• Commentary from the British Museum on Flemish Characters (1).
• Draper Hill, Mr. Gillray The Caricaturist, 1965, p. 49-50.
• Vic Gatrell, The First Bohemians, London, 2014
• Thomas Wright and R.H. Evans, Historical and Descriptive Account of the Caricatures of James Gillray #397/398
• Thomas Wright and Joseph Grego, The Works of James Gillray, the Caricaturist; With the History of His Life and Times p. 170.

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