print;
satirical print
- Museum number
- 1868,0808.7307
- Title
- Object: The Death of Madame Republique
- Description
-
In a curtained bed (l.) lies 'Mme République', dead. On the r. stands John Bull, a fat citizen in old-fashioned dress, to whom the Abbé Sieyès shows an infant Napoleon, tiny but with mature profile. He asks: "Pray Mr Abbé Sayes - what was the cause of the poor Ladys Death? She seem'd at one time in a tolerable thriving way." The abbe, who is oddly youthful, answers, "She died in Child-bed - Mr Bull - after giving birth to this little Emperor." Napoleon, wearing a crown, turns to John Bull, holding out at arm's length sceptre and orb. His mother wears a cap with a tricolour cockade. On a table beside the bed are bottles of 'Purging Mixture' and 'Laudanum'. A chamber-pot is inscribed 'Vive la Liberté Vive la Republique'. 14 December 1804
Hand-coloured etching
- Production date
- 1804
- Dimensions
-
Height: 230 millimetres
-
Width: 345 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- (Description and comment from M.Dorothy George, 'Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires in the British Museum', VIII, 1947)
For the Empire see BMSat 10247, &c. For Sieyès, the constitution-maker (relegated to obscurity after Brumaire), see BMSat 9509.
Grego, 'Rowlandson', ii. 147. Broadley, i. 225. Van Stolk, No. 5994.
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
1989/90 Nov-Jan, Glasgow Mus & AG, World of Thomas Rowlandson
1990 Jan-Mar, Leicester City AG, World of Thomas Rowlandson
1990/1 Nov-Jan, Maidstone Museum, World of Thomas Rowlandson
1991 Jan-Mar, Swansea, Glynn Vivian AG, World of Thomas Rowlandson
- Acquisition date
- 1868
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1868,0808.7307