print;
satirical print
- Museum number
- J,3.69
- Title
- Object: John Bull offering little Boney fair play.
- Description
-
John Bull is a sailor, stripped to the waist, his trousers turned up, who stands arms akimbo in the English Channel. He looks at Napoleon, whose head peers over the top of a triple fortification on the French coast, bristling with guns, at the base of which small gun-boats are drawn up, on a low cliff rising from the sea. Napoleon, wearing his feathered cocked hat, haggard and alarmed, says: "I'm a com'ing! I'm a' coming!!!" Beside him flies a tricolour flag inscribed 'Vive la Liberta.' John, brawny and contemptuous, asks: "You're a' coming"? - You be d-n'd! [see BMSat 10110] If you mean to invade us - why make such a rout? - I say, Little Boney - why don't you come out? - yes, d-n ye, why don't you come out?" The words of both float upwards in large labels. On a cliff behind John is a fort flying the Union flag. 2 August 1803
Hand-coloured etching
- Production date
- 1803
- Dimensions
-
Height: 205 millimetres
-
Width: 257 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- (Description and comment from M.Dorothy George, 'Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires in the British Museum', VIII, 1947)
Oneof many invasion prints, see BMSat 10008; cf. BMSats 10073, 10141.
Grego, 'Gillray', pp. 300-1. Wright and Evans, No. 297. Broadley, i. 184. Reprinted, 'G.W.G.', 1830. Reproduced, Wheeler and Broadley, ii. 158.
- Location
- Not on display
- Acquisition date
- 1818
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- J,3.69