Morning Preparation
Morning Preparation is one of two paired prints, satirizing Charles James Fox, Edmund Burke, and Frederick Lord North who had been part of the Fox-North Coalition that had been dismissed in December of 1783 and lost a bid to regain power in March of 1784. First issued in February 1785 when Gillray was still trying to make a name for himself as a "serious" engraver, they were two of only three political prints Gillray created that year. A fourth political print, Ahithophel in the Dumps, was simply a reissue of a print from 1782.
Not surprisingly since Gillray's focus was elsewhere, the satire does not seem to have been prompted by a specific political event, but is directed at the general character of the three men out of office.
© National Portrait Gallery, London
Morning Preparation shows the famously indolent Lord North yawning broadly as he awakes from sleep. The broken bellows above his head may suggest his uselessness in reigniting interest in the coalition.
Fox is shown rehearsing a speech like an actor gesticulating before a mirror. As in the earlier The Soliloquy, Gillray suggests the theatricality of Fox. The double image and lantern shown here also suggest Fox's duplicity and ruthless ambition in conspiring for office.
Finally, an impoverished Burke is shown mending his breeches next to a spider web. Since falling from office, Burke had little income apart from that earned from his writing and was known to be in straitened circumstances. The web may suggest his unfortunate involvement with Fox from whom he was not to extricate himself until much later.
The prints are among the first to make extensive use of aquatint rather than etched shading lines or cross-hatching. The result is not wholly successful, appearing somewhat muddy and lacking the crisp line of Gillray's earlier prints. But it foreshadows the restless energy and experimentation that Gillray will display when he recommits himself to caricature.
Sources and Reading
- Commentary from the British Museum on Morning Preparation
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