Description:
Hand-colored engraving titled: "A French Petit Maitre and His Valet" based on a painting by Michel Vincent Brandoin (1733 - 1807), a painter, watercolourist, draughtsman and caricaturist, and engraved by Charles Grignion ( 1717 - 1810), which is titled "Le Petit Maitre et son Valet." It depictis an ageing man aping French dress, looking over his shoulder at his blue-coated valet who advances from the right holding out a paper inscribed "Au petit Marquis." The marquis wears an enormous black bag wig with a solitaire ribbon loosely round his neck; a very large nosegay on his left. shoulder; a sword whose hilt is decorated with ribbons; and his coat covered with heart-shaped spots. The valet, although wearing a ruffled shirt and laced waistcoat, has his hair in curl-papers with a comb thrust into it. French fashion was a source of ridicule for English satirists, as this example illustrates. The term Petit Maitre was used disparagingly to not only ridicule a French affectation in dress and manners, but also sodomy and homosexuality. Author Peter McNeil suggests the sewer is a reference to a "back passage," while the equipment for a game of "cock and balls" lies on the ground. The street scene in the background shows a stone tablet high on the side of a stone building inscribed "Rue d'Enfer" (then a well-known street in Paris) directly over the two men, and irregularly placed houses, a tall circular tower; the foreground shows foliage and rough stones on the ground. The bottom of the print has the inscription: "London, Printed for Rob. Sayer, No. 53, in Fleet Street & J. Smith No. 35 Cheapside as the Act directs 1st, Nov. 1771." From his premises in Fleet Street, Robert Sayer (1725-1794) traded as a print seller and map publisher under his own name from the 1740s until his death, or in partnership with his former apprentice, John Bennett (d.1787) from 1774 to around 1785. Bendoin worked in London from 1768-1762 where Sayre also published other examples of his work. This image was also produced on transfer-printed delft tiles by Sadler and Green, and was known as "The Little Marquis and his Valet." M. Dorothy George in her "Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires in the British Museum" (1935) notes that "The grass-grown street probably satirizes the solitude of Paris streets compared with those of London." This satirical print references the Macaroni, a much-lampooned figure for English satirists during the early 1770s. Popular in the 1760s and 1770s, the Macaroni name at first referrred to aristocratic young English men who had made the Grand Tour; the name reflects their taste for the cuisine and fashions of Italy, among other countries. Quickly, the name applied to men of all social standings who affected a combination of behavioral and sartorial characteristics sometimes at odds with emerging gender normatives for English men. Macaronis were seen as a threat to aspects of English society, often portrayed as vaguely French, foreign, and not to be trusted. Certain aspects of dress are ascibed to the macaroni, including powdered hair and a small hat, sometimes under the arm as in this example, as well the combination/wearing of unusual patterns. Satirical print makers and sellers, including Mathew and Mary Darly (active c. 1770s) thrived on their depictions of the Macaroni.
Tags:
satire Link to share this object record:
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