print;
satirical print
- Museum number
- 1868,0808.12624
- Title
- Object: British cookery or "out of the frying-pan into the fire"
- Description
-
Plate from the 'Scourge', i. Scene in a kitchen. Wellington (left) stands before a huge fire inscribed 'Grand Kitchen of Europe' basting a goose with a human head which is spitted on a bayonet inscribed 'British Spit'. He uses a 'British Basting Ladle' and with his left hand he holds a frying-pan inscribed 'Portugal'. From this many little French officers wearing cocked hats and with the legs of apes are leaping into the flames which are inscribed 'Spain'. The smoke is inscribed 'French Gasconade'. Another general, Graham (right), kneeling on one knee, plies bellows inscribed 'British Bravery'. Behind Wellington (left) is a large rectangular charcoal stove on the flames, on which rests a saucepan inscribed 'A Stew'. From this emerge the head and shoulders of Napoleon, crowned, and gesticulating wildly. On the ground beside it is an Ali-Baba jar, inscribed 'A Pickle', from which project the head and hands of Ney.
1 May 1811
Hand-coloured etching
- Production date
- 1811
- Dimensions
-
Height: 247 millimetres
-
Width: 325 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- (Description and comment from M. Dorothy George, 'Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires in the British Museum', IX, 1949)
See No. 11722. The plate is explained; 'That Ney should be in a pickle and Buonaparte in a stew John Bull will think very natural. General Graham . . . [gives] new vigor to the flame of patriotism.' The spitted goose is Massena. Graham gained the brilliant victory of Barrosa over Marshal Victor, 5 Mar. 1811, and received the thanks of Parliament on 28 Mar. Ney, commanding the Sixth Corps in the Peninsula, in March refused to obey Massena's orders, was removed from his command, and returned to Paris where he was reprimanded by Napoleon. Fortescue, 'Hist. of the British Army', viii. 94 f. See also No. 11862. Cf. No. 11919 where Napoleon is roasted.
Broadley, i. 280.
- Location
- Not on display
- Acquisition date
- 1868
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1868,0808.12624
