The Fall of Dagon- or Rare news for Leadenhall Street

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Thomas Rowlandson
1756-1827
The Fall of Dagon- or Rare news for Leadenhall Street
etching
image: 189 x 290 mm; plate mark: 236 x 31 mm
Purchased by J. Pierpont Morgan, 1900.
Peel 1359
Published: 
[London] : Publish'd Jany. 4. 1784 by W. Humphrey, 227 Strand, [1784]
Provenance: 
Formerly owned by Sir Robert Peel.
Notes: 

Printmaker from British Museum online catalog.
Title from item.

Summary: 

The image of Dagon has fallen from an overturned rectangular pedestal (right) whose base is inscribed 'Broad Bottom'. The image is a stout man with a double-faced, Janus-like head, consisting of the faces of North and Fox, decapitated; the hands are severed at the wrists; it lies prone, the face of North to the ground, that of Fox uppermost. In the distance is Tower Hill, with a scaffold surrounded by tiny figures representing a crowd. A figure kneels before a block, the headsman's axe is raised. In the middle distance (left) is the gable end of an inn, its sign that of a headsman's axe. A stout man stands beneath it. It is inscribed 'Tower Hill'. Beneath the title is engraved: 'And behold Dagon was fallen upon his face to the ground before the ark of the Lord & the head of Dagon and both the Palms of his hands were cutt off upon the threshold.' Cf. British Museum online catalog.

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