Description:
Hand-colored satirical fashion print depicting two opposing couples, which is titled "STYLE - P 1" on the top edge, and "TOWN Country" and made by William Heath (1794/5-1840) and "Pub. by T. McLean 26 Haymarket." Fashion has always been an easy target for satirists. In this example, the humorist has set up two opposing couples, urban and rural, whose clothing choices do neither party credit. The sartorially-savvy man and woman on the left are dressed in exaggerated extremes of 1820s fashion. The woman wears an impossibly tall and wide bonnet to balance out her equally wide skirt hem, and her small waist is made unnaturally tiny. Her partner is shown likewise with a small waist, as well as baggy trousers and artificially lightened hair. The countrified couple on the right appears equally ridiculous, albeit on the other side of the fashion spectrum, as simple people dressed in clothing held over from the previous century. Their unsophisticated deportment is made clear by the man who has clumsily tucked his hose into outdated, knee-length breeches (the sign of a country bumpkin), and the woman in an outmoded, quilted petticoat worn as a skirt. The print was published by Thomas McLean (1788-1875), a London printseller and publisher who specialised in the publication of political caricatures, working at 26 Haymarket from the 1820-1860s. William Heath (1794/5-1840) sometimes marked his work at the lower lefthand side with a small black ink figure of a man in a tailcoat with an umbrella, as is the case on this example and another ("Barney the Cooper" at the Wellcome Library in London). The figure may represent Paul Pry, the title character in an eponymous play featuring a busy body who carries an umbrella. The play was first performed at or near the Haymarket, where McLean published. The plate has been colored using watercolor paints, as was typically done by the printseller, who may have employed women colorists.
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+2011.24 |
