This is a very old 1822 imprint, from the original Hogarth plate, in excellent bright clean condition. The style of the wordings underneath and the size of the print are right.
.Hogarth's wife Jane sold the plates to Boydell. The plates were then bought by the publisher Baldwin, Cradock and Joy at the Boydell sale in 1818. They published a book called "The Works of William Hogarth" in 1822 with the original plates restored by James Heath, engraver to His Majesty. The Heath edition was the last to print directly from Hogarth's original engraved plates. All 'Hogarth' prints appearing after this date are merely copies with either a recut plate or the 'engravers version'.' The print is rare, especially in this condition. Print is about 45 cm by 38 cm. We can post in our out of the excellent condition gilt frame and double mount, but we would prefer not to post with the glass. Frame is 74 by 66 cm.
Secure tracked postage only R90.
We are Treasure House, selling pictures from the same address in the greater Cape Town area for over 15 years.
Detailed description:
Her husband killed and her lover hanged, the Countess, returned to her father's house, is driven to suicide by the tragic consequences of the foolish and ill-fated venture perpetrated on her.
Plainly dressed, she expires on a chair as an ineffectual physician scurries away. On the floor lies a bottle of "Laudanum"; next to it the precipitating cause of her suicide, "Counseller Silvertongue last Dying Speech." As her impassive, mercenary father dispassionately removes the ring from her finger, a withered old nurse holds her daughter for a dying kiss. The crippled girl has inherited both her father's veneral disease and his beauty spot; since the young Earl has no male child, his family line has ended. The apothecary, who has a stomach pump and a "julep" bottle in his pocket, points to the empty laudenum bottle, and berates the servant who looks at it uncomprehendingly. The fellow, who wears his master's ill-fitting coat buttoned askew, is an idiot hired cheaply by the alderman.
The house reflects the alderman's miserly life style, which has supported his costly and tragic manipulation of his daughter's life. A dark apartment with bare floors and cobwebbed window with broken panes, is located near London Bridge, which at that time had house built across it. On the wall hangs the alderman' robe, a clock with its figures reversed (it should be 1:56 P.M.) and an "Almanack." Three "Dutch" paintings (really satires of Dutch realism) decorate the walls; the first (unframed) depicts a man urinating; the second is a still-life crowded with "low" objects (an arbitrary collection of kitchen utensils, jugs and food); the third shows a drunkard lighting his pipe from the swollen nose of a companion. In the alderman's cabinet stands a single liquor bottle, some pipes and a library of five books; four are financial records: the "Day Boo," "Ledge," "Rent Book" and "Compound Interest." The hall is lined with fire buckets.
From the meager fare on the table, a skeleton-like dog steals a lean pig's head.
