print;
satirical print
- Museum number
- 1872,1012.5052
- Title
- Object: Breaking up of the blue stocking club.
- Description
-
A wild mêlée over a tea-table, five pairs of women in furious combat. The round table still stands but the tea-tray slides to the floor, where broken tea-things have already fallen. Two viragoes fight, leaning across the table which separates them, tearing each other's hair: one (right) kicks over an arm-chair, the other rests a foot on the upturned posterior of a woman lying on her back, whose face receives a deluge of scalding water from an urn held up by her antagonist. A furious hag presses down the head of a victim with a bleeding nose. Two others scratch and tear frantically at each other's face and hair, while a younger woman flourishes a brass trivet, seizing her elderly antagonist who tries to flee from the room (right). Three huge and excited cats add to the uproar. Besides the debris of china there are two spirit-bottles, one inscribed 'Ratifia', the other 'French Cream' [brandy], a wine-glass, and an overturned chamber-pot.
Plate numbered 343.
1 March 1815
Hand-coloured etching
- Production date
- 1815
- Dimensions
-
Height: 246 millimetres (trimmed)
-
Width: 349 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- (Description and comment from M. Dorothy George, 'Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires in the British Museum', IX, 1949)
Grego, 'Rowlandson', ii. 289.
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
2008 Mar-Jun, London, National Portrait Gallery, 'Brilliant Women...'
- Acquisition date
- 1872
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1872,1012.5052
