print;
satirical print
- Museum number
- 1859,0316.31
- Title
- Object: Double bass.
- Description
-
Two men, elderly and grotesque, stand one on each side of a double-bass, playing it simultaneously with great vigour; one (right) is left-handed. Behind the instrument stands a violinist, holding up fiddle and bow in his right hand, giving an agonized scream and stopping his ear with his finger. In the foreground lies a large open music-book: 'Double Bass Hum strum diddle dum'. On the wall is a picture of a little chimneysweep flourishing two brushes like drum-sticks behind the Hottentot Venus (Saartjie Baartman; see No. 11577, &c.), who capers along, pipe in one hand, staff in the other, her much-exaggerated posterior serving as a drum. A vase of flowers stands on a wall-bracket. Below the title: 'Proposals for six practical Duets adapted to any instrument'.
10 May 1811.
Hand-coloured etching
- Production date
- 1811
- Dimensions
-
Height: 238 millimetres
-
Width: 220 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- (Description and comment from M. Dorothy George, 'Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires in the British Museum', IX, 1949)
Reid, No. 121. Cohn, No. 1072.
..............................................
The print was later published by Hannah Humphrey, see 1851,0901.1308
- Location
- Not on display
- Acquisition date
- 1859
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1859,0316.31