Very Slippy Weather
This print shows the display window of Hannah Humphrey's shop at 27 St. James's Street. Mrs. Humphrey was Gillray's principal employer and, after the death of Gillray's parents in 1797, his landlady. Gillray lived in rooms above the shop from 1797 until his death in 1815.
The print is part of a series of seven prints on different weather conditions based upon drawings by Gillray's friend John Sneyd. Draper Hill points out that several of the prints displayed in the window were based on sketches by Sneyd and indeed the unfortunate man in the center of the picture is sometimes said to be a caricature portrait of Sneyd.
© National Portrait Gallery, London
Not suprisingly, the windows are full of Gillray prints, including the following: Top Row: Taking Physick [1800], A Gentle Emetic [1804], A Brisk Cathartic [1804], Breathing a Vein [1804], and Charming Well Again [1804]; Second Row: Coming in at the Death [1800], Tiddy Doll, the Great French Gingerbread Baker [1806], The King of Brobdingnag and Gulliver [1803], A Kick at the Broad Bottoms [1807], and Oh That This too Solid Flesh Would Melt [1791]; Third Row: A Decent Story [1795], Ladies Dress, as it Soon Will Be [1796], Two Penny Whist [1796], The Caneing in Conduit Street [1796], and Palemon and Lavinia [1805]. Inside the shop two clergymen examine another print by Gillray, End of the Irish Farce of Catholic Emancipation [1805].
Gillray was not the first to portray a contemporary print shop window with its assortment of prints in the windows and gawkers outside. Edward Topham captured the Darly's shop windows in 1772, John Smith showed Bowles'shop in 1773, Richard Newton portrayed the inside of Henry Holland's print shop in 1794, and Anonymous portrayed P. Roberts standing in the doorway of his print shop in 1801.
Sources and Reading
- Commentary from the British Museum on Very Slippy Weather
- Draper Hill, Mr. Gillray The Caricaturist, 1965, Frontispiece
- Draper Hill, Fashionable Contrasts, 1966, #99
- Draper Hill, The Satirical Etchings of James Gillray, 1976, #91
- "Letters to John Sneyd," Harvard Houghton Library
- Thomas Wright and R.H. Evans, Historical and Descriptive Account of the Caricatures of James Gillray #559
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