Lowest 'Life in London'...

Cruikshank, George (1792-1878)

Item type:

print

Date of creation:

1821

Technique / Medium:

etching

Description

A social gathering of seventeen individuals of various ages, races, and ranks, at a tavern for socializing, drinking, music, and dancing. From the British Museum website: Illustration to Pierce Egan's Life in London, page 286. Customers drink and smoke, seated round the walls of a sordid room, while a black woman and a coal-whipper (Black Sal and dusty Bob) dance a double shuffle. A baby on the lap of a woman smoking a pipe extends its arms to its mother, while Jerry pours gin down the mouth of the wooden-legged fiddler. Logic sits with a woman on each knee, one black. Tom makes overtures to the fat mistress of the house who stands by the fire over which is a notice: All Lickers To Bee Paed For On Delivery. The room is lit by a gas-jet.

Iconclass

32A5
caricatures (human types)
46A11
division into classes ( ~ society)
43B31
inn, coffee-house, public house, etc.
41B21
open hearth, fire-place
48C7521
one person playing string instrument (bowed)
48C7311
violin, fiddle

Instruments [MIMO Code] (notes)

Violin [3573] (with bow)

RIdIM images

Image URLs

image link 1
image link 3

Notes

INSCRIPTION WITHIN IMAGE [sign above fireplace]:
["]ALL LICKERS/TO BEE PAED/FOR ON DEL/IVERY["]
INSCRIPTIONS BELOW IMAGE[right side]:
drawn and engr[ve].d by LR & G Cruikshank.
INSCRIPTIONS BELOW IMAGE[centered]: LOWEST "LIFE in LONDON"_ Tom, Jerry and Logic among the unsophisticated Sons/and Daughters of Nature at "All Max" in the East.
INSCRIPTIONS BELOW IMAGE [centered beneath title lines]:
Pub[lishe].d by Sherwood Neeley & Jones. May 1, 1821.

RIdIM record id

6338