print;
satirical print
- Museum number
- 1865,1111.2234
- Title
-
Object: "Life" among the Dead!! or Dick Wildfire, Squire Jenkins & the Halibut family in the Catacombs.
-
Series: Life in Paris
- Description
-
See No. 14465. P. 323. The walls of a rocky vault supported by masonry are covered with skulls, symmetrically arranged. A guide with torch and lantern, two men (with torches) and two ladies are terrified by Dick, who kneels in a recess holding up a stick topped by a skull and with hanging drapery. 1 May 1822
Hand-coloured aquatint and etching
- Production date
- 1822
- Dimensions
-
Height: 125 millimetres
-
Width: 182 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- (Description and comment from M. Dorothy George, 'Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires in the British Museum', X, 1952)
This may derive from a plate on the same subject in Doctor Syntax in Paris, p. 309. The Paris Catacombes date from 1786, when ancient quarries were adapted for the relief of the insanitary urban burial-places. A regular system of piling bones was adopted in 1810, and by 1814 the Catacombes were one of the sights of Paris. Hist, of Paris, pub. Galignani, Paris, 1825, iii. 324-52. For a pen and pencil drawing, reversed, with marginal studies; also, pencil studies, signed, for the catacomb and figures, see 1891,1117.43-44 (Binyon, i. 285. Pressmark 199.c.1/43, 44).
- Location
- Not on display
- Acquisition date
- 1865
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1865,1111.2234