print;
satirical print
- Museum number
- 1866,1013.964
- Title
- Object: A new work Coke upon Albermarle, not Coke upon Littleton.
- Description
-
Two designs, one below the other. [1] A breakfast parlour; Lady Ann, in a morning gown and cap, sits with her back to the small square table, registering resentful melancholy; she holds an open book: A bold Stroke for a Husband [Mrs. Cowley's comedy, 1783], and sighs Heigh! O! At her feet is a paper: Deserted Village. Thomas Coke, in dressing-gown and slippers, with spectacles on forehead, sits gloomily beside the table, on which he rests his right elbow. He holds an egg in an egg-cup and a spoon and says: Dear me I've lost my Appetite, now is it not a pity? Beside him are a pair of top-boots and papers: Holkham; All my Eye; Art of Love. On the table are only tea-things, a tea-caddy, a large urn, the lid terminating in antlers, steaming violently, the steam mingling with a picture, Destruction [of] Herculaneum, in which massive pillars fall apart. This picture is flanked by one of Bottom and Titania inscribed Midsumer Night [Drea]m (above Lady Ann), and one of a large Norfolk Turkey above Coke. Along the wall runs a panelled chest or buffet; at one end (left) is a dish of steaming Norfolk Dumplings, at the other a row of medicine-bottles, one labelled Bark and a Plaster.
[2] A footman in livery stands at the door of a town house answering two men who stand arm-in-arm. One is a fashionably dressed officer wearing a very tall bearskin; the other wears breeches and top-boots, and white top-hat of rakish pattern. The latter asks: Pray how are Mr and Mrs Coke to day? The man answers: My Master is as well as can be expected, and Lady Anne is the same as she was the day before. All three smile. The house is a corner one; an opposite house, adjoining a garden, is labelled Paddington. (Coke's town address was Park Place.) April 1822
Hand-coloured etching
- Production date
- 1822
- Dimensions
-
Height: 391 millimetres
-
Width: 261 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- (Description and comment from M. Dorothy George, 'Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires in the British Museum', X, 1952)
See No. 14422. Coke, who had only daughters by his first wife, is said to have married to spite a nephew. By Lady Anne he had four sons and a daughter. The title is an allusion to the short title of Sir Edward Coke's The Institutes of the Laws of England (1628-44).
- Location
- Not on display
- Acquisition date
- 1866
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1866,1013.964