print;
satirical print;
frontispiece
- Museum number
- 1868,0808.12855
- Title
- Object: [Frontispiece to the first volume of the Black Dwarf
- Description
-
A satyr, muscular and almost nude, takes by the hand a little black dwarf (right) while he points with left forefinger at a group of emblems (left) surrounded with smoke, at which he looks with a fierce, sardonic, and exulting grin. The dwarf capers delightedly, left hand on hip; he has fierce aquiline features, wears a turban decorated with three pen-feathers, and doublet and hose of quasi-Spanish type. The emblems, apparently about to be burned, are: two judge's wigs on wig-blocks, one erect and in back-view, the other overthrown; a sceptre, erect, serving as prop for a crown on which is a fool's cap; neat bundles of papers, a fetter. Near the dwarf lie torn papers and a scroll headed 'Ex Officio' and 'Tell me gentle Shepherd where.'
January 1818
Etching and engraving
- Production date
- 1818
- Dimensions
-
Height: 228 millimetres
-
Width: 206 millimetres
- Curator's comments
- (Description and comment from M. Dorothy George, 'Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires in the British Museum', IX, 1949)
Wooler (1786?-1853) was tried before Justice Abbott and a special jury on 5 June 1817 on Ex Officio Informations (see No. 11717, &c.) for two libels in the 'Black Dwarf' for 2 Apr., and conducted his own defence by impassioned appeals to the jury. He was acquitted of the first libel, convicted of the second, but owing to doubt as to the unanimity of the jury owing to the haste with which the judge accepted the verdict, he was granted a second trial, and was then acquitted on the plea that he could not be said to write articles which he set up in type without MS. 'Tell me gentle Shepherd . . .' indicates the Attorney-General with whom Wooler had a contest in court. The line from the old song (by Samuel Howard) was well known from its quotation by the elder Pitt in an attack on Grenville in Mar. 1763, after which Grenville was long known as the 'Gentle Shepherd'. Walpole, 'Memoirs of George III', i. 251. Wooler was repeatedly caricatured as the Black Dwarf of this print, which is parodied in No. 12988, his blunt negroid features, very different from those of this dwarf, lending themselves to caricature. The satyr probably derives from the (ancient) confusion between satyr and satire.
(Supplementary information)
'Published by T. J. Wooler 58 Sun Street.' in the inscription according to B.M.L. P.P. 3612. ac.
Wooler announced in the 'Black Dwarf' for 14 Jan. (ii. 23) that title-page, index, and 'A Humourous Frontispiece' for vol. i (which began 29 Feb. 1817) were now ready.
Accompanied by a photograph of another impression of the same print.
- Location
- Not on display
- Acquisition date
- 1868
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1868,0808.12855