Description

[002888] [Caricature]. A Great Stream from a Petty Fountain; or John Bull Swamped in the Flood of New Taxes; Cormorants Fishing in the Stream. ill. Starcke, Carl After Gillray, James. Weimar: London und Paris Magazine, Reprint. 8vo (Oblong). Unbound. Caricature. Good Hand coloured engraved caricature, approximately 275mm x 225mm in size, n.d. c.1806.

Trimmed quite closely but without loss to image, minor creasing from original folds, otherwise fairly bright and clean.

Caricature by Gillray, originally published in May 1806 by H.[annah] Humphrey, this was reproduced by Carl Starcke for the ‘London und Paris’ magazine, which appeared eight times a year in octavo between 1798 and 1815, with each issue consisting of three parts, opening with articles from London, then Paris and a third, satirical, part comprising English and French political caricatures (See Deuling, ‘Aesthetics and Politics in the Journal London und Paris (1798-1815)’ in Oergel (Ed), ‘(Re-) Writing the Radical – Enlightenment, Revolution and Cultural Transfer in 1790s Germany, Britain and France’, pages 102-118).

The caricature shows John Bull, having lost his ‘William Pitt’ oar, being swamped by the ‘unfathomable sea of taxation’ unleashed by the budget of Lord Henry Petty; in this torrent, anthropomorphic cormorants greedily fish, representing many of the prominent Whig politicians who had previously argued against excessive taxation, including Grenville, Sidmouth, Sheridan, Fox and Moira