print;
satirical print
- Museum number
- 1851,0901.782
- Title
- Object: Spencers
- Description
-
A ragged street musician, playing a pipe and tabor to a troupe of five dancing dogs, stands (left) in profile to the right. The dogs, one dressed as a woman, all wear spencers or short coats of slightly varying patterns. He wears a spencer, or ragged coat with a broad collar, cut short below the hips, the tattered tail of another coat hanging below it. The spectators who watch the dogs are similarly dressed: a fat man, full-face, clasping his sides, wears a half-coat over a tail-coat. The woman next him wears a short spencer over her high-waisted dress, as do two others who walk away. On the left is a young blood, similarly but more extravagantly dressed, with cropped hair, deep swathed neck-cloth, half-boots with deep tops; he holds a bludgeon. His curiously drawn and much caricatured companion (right) is dressed like the other women, all of whom wear tall feathers in their turbans or bonnets. Beneath the title are twelve lines of verse beginning:
'Dont think my puppies stand alone
If you will make the search Sir
Puppies at the Bar you'll find
And Puppies in the Church Sir!
Half coat pups and booted pups
And. pups without their hair Sir.' 13 March 1796
Hand-coloured etching
- Production date
- 1796
- Dimensions
-
Height: 245 millimetres
-
Width: 343 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- (Description and comment from M.Dorothy George, 'Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires in the British Museum', VII, 1942)
For the spencer see BMSat 8192 (1792).
- Location
- Not on display
- Acquisition date
- 1851
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1851,0901.782
