print;
satirical print
- Museum number
- 1868,0808.6033
- Title
- Object: "The accusing spirit which flew up to heavens "Chancery with the oath, blush'd as he gave it "In, and the recording angel as he wrote it down "Dropt a tear on the word , and blotted it out "for ever".
- Description
-
The Recording Angel sits full face in the upper part of the design, writing at a long scroll, which rests on a small but very solid rectangular table supported on billowing clouds. He is a sulky-faced naked child, with wide-spread wings and wearing a nightcap. A large tear falls from his right eye. The Accusing Spirit, a bald-headed, elderly man, his face blotched with drink, with wings and wearing a long robe, in profile to the right, holds up to the Angel a paper inscribed "He shall not dye by xxx". The winged heads of a man and woman, poised on the claws of birds of prey, rest on clouds in the upper left corner of the design; he regards her insinuatingly, she grins back. A cherub's winged head flies behind the Accusing Spirit. Rays of light fall diagonally from the right on the Recording Angel. Billowing clouds complete the design. Below the title: 'Dedicated (without permission) to the Revd Mr Peters.' 8 April 1791
Hand-coloured etching
- Production date
- 1791
- Dimensions
-
Height: 412 millimetres
-
Width: 299 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- (Description and comment from M.Dorothy George, 'Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires in the British Museum', VI, 1938)
No picture by Peters has been traced of which this is a direct burlesque. Cf. BMSat 7965.
Additional commentary:
Gillray's title is a quote from Volume VI Chapter 8 of Laurence Sterne's "Tristram Shandy" (with thanks to Jim Sherry, by email October 2017).
- Location
- Not on display
- Acquisition date
- 1868
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1868,0808.6033
