The Dutch toy

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Charles Williams
1796-1866
The Dutch toy
etching
image: 228 x 313 mm; plate mark: 260 x 336 mm; sheet: 277 x 353 mm
Purchased by J. Pierpont Morgan, 1900.
Peel 1975
Published: 
London : Pubd June 1st 1814 by W Holland N° 11 Cockspur Street, 1814 June 1.
Provenance: 
Formerly owned by Sir Robert Peel.
Notes: 

Lettered "Pubd June 1st 1814 by W Holland N° 11 Cockspur Street."

Summary: 

Princess Charlotte (a flattering portrait) stands raising a whip to lash a top spinning on the floor, on which sits in profile to the right a little Dutchman smoking a pipe. He wears the short jacket, bulky breeches, and flower-pot hat of the Dutchman in English caricature, but orange-coloured and with epaulets, and with a paper inscribed 'Contract' in his pocket to show that he is the Prince of Orange. An ermine-lined robe hangs from her shoulders over a décolletée dress. She says: "Take this for Ma! and this for Pa!--and this! and this! for myself, you ugly thing you!--" The door (right) is slightly open, allowing an arm holding a birch-rod tied with orange ribbon and an unmistakable leg to project into the room. The words of the concealed Regent float in on a label: 'If you don't find pleasure in whipping the Top, I shall whip the Bottom!' Against the wall (left) is a square piano with an open music-book, with the words and music of a song: 'An Obstinate Daughter's the plague of you [sic] life / No rest can you take tho your rid of your Wife / At twenty she laughs at the duty you taught her / Oh! what a plague is an obstinate Daughter.' [Sheridan, 'The Duenna'] On the piano is a book, 'School for Wives' [comedy by Hugh Kelly, 1773]. On the wall is a picture of Cupid standing on his head on a terrestrial globe at the point where 'Holland' is marked: he has dropped his bow, arrows fall from his quiver towards 'England'.

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