High-change in Bond Street, ou, La politesse du grande monde / Js. Gy. d. et fect.

Image not available
James Gillray
1756-1815
High-change in Bond Street, ou, La politesse du grande monde / Js. Gy. d. et fect.
hand colored etching
image: 24.7 x 34.3 cm; plate: 25.3 x 35.1 cm; sheet: 26.8 x 37 cm
Purchased by J. Pierpont Morgan, 1900.
Peel 2932
Published: 
[London] : H. Humphrey, 1796.
Provenance: 
Formerly owned by Sir Robert Peel.
Summary: 

Bond Street, the pavement receding diagonally from left to right, is thronged with fashionable pedestrians. In the foreground five fashionably dressed men advance, forming a phalanx which pushes on to the cobbled roadway a lady, dressed rather for the ball-room than the street, to whose arm clings a little girl; both are in back view. The men smile or leer. The lady's neck diminishes to a point, tresses of hair hang from her turban, which is trimmed by a gigantic erect feather. Her over-dress hangs from her shoulders and swells into folds which sweep the ground. She holds a fan. Behind (right) three ladies walk arm-in-arm in the roadway: a fat woman in a riding-habit, looking through an opera-glass, and two younger women, one with her face covered by a transparent veil reaching nearly to the (knees, the other looking demurely down.

Artist page: 
Classification: 
Department: