Elements of Skateing:
Attitude! Attitude is Every Thing!
This is one of a four-print series, Elements of Skateing, strategically scheduled for sale in late November as winter arrived in Britain, reviving the interest in (and possibility of) ice skating on lakes, ponds, and streams. Before reading further, you may want to look at my Introduction to the series which provides some general background about ice skating and its portrayal in paintings, prints, and drawings before Gillray.
Attitude! Attitude is Every Thing!
[November 24, 1805]
© Trustees of the British Museum
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Like the rest of the series, Attitude! Attitude is Every Thing! owes a general debt to Robert Jones's Treatise on Skating (1772) which, according to its subtitle, reduces "that noble Exercise" to "an Art [that] may be taught and learned by a regular Method with both Ease and Safety." At least three of the skating figures in the print bear some resemblance to those described and illustrated by Jones. And the print's title is also likely to have been derived from the Treatise where "attitude" is used repeatedly to describe the proper posture or position required to perform a figure.
Unlike the other prints in the series, however, no one in this plate is threatened with injury (or worse). Instead, this plate is built upon the contrast of the two figures in a way that reminds one of the Cockney Sportsmen Marking Game. One is fat, the other is thin; one is haughty and graceful, the other is nervous and awkward.* The humor is in the contrast. A competition is going on between the two. The only thing likely to be bruised is an ego.
* The pose of the awkward skater is anticipated in a 1785 print, Skaiting Scene in Hyde Park by Harrison & Co.
Sources and Reading
- Commentary from the British Museum on Elements of Skateing: Attitude! Attitude is Every Thing!.
- Rachel Knowles, "Ice Skating in Regency London," Regency History
- "Ice skating," Wikipedia
- "Ice Skating," Encyclopedia Britannica
- Robert Jones, A Treatise on Skating
- "Robert Jones (artilleryman)," Wikipedia
- Thomas Wright and R.H. Evans, Historical and Descriptive Account of the Caricatures of James Gillray #540.
- Thomas Wright and Joseph Grego, The Works of James Gillray, the Caricaturist; With the History of His Life and Times, p. 326.
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