The genius of France triumphant, or, Britannia petitioning for peace / Js. Gy. desn. fect.

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James Gillray
1756-1815
The genius of France triumphant, or, Britannia petitioning for peace / Js. Gy. desn. fect.
aquatint
image: 24.7 x 33.7 cm; plate: 25 x 35 cm; sheet: 26.4 x 36.5 cm
Purchased by J. Pierpont Morgan, 1900.
Peel 2850
Published: 
[London] : H. Humphrey, 1795.
Provenance: 
Formerly owned by Sir Robert Peel.
Summary: 

Britannia (left) grovels before a monster (right) representing the French Republic. Behind her stand Fox, Sheridan, and Stanhope, as sansculottes, joyfully hailing the apparition. Britannia on her knees, and bending forward, holds out her arms in a gesture of abject submission, pointing to her shield and spear, the crown and sceptre, and 'Magna Charta' which lie on the ground before her. She is on the edge of a cliff. The monster is supported on dark clouds; he is a man seated with arms and legs akimbo, one jack-boot is planted on the sun, a face in its disk looking from the corners of the eyes at Britannia with a dismayed expression; the other is on a crescent enclosing the old moon. His seat is the point of a huge bomb-shaped cap of 'Li-ber-tas'. His head is a black cloud on which grotesquely fierce features are indicated. Above his head rises a guillotine emitting rays of light. His dress is that of a ragged sansculotte with a dagger thrust in his belt.

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