A domestic interior. An unattractive citizen, wearing old-fashioned dress with a small unpowdered wig, stands on the hearth-rug (right), his back to the fire; he is meditatively reading the 'Gazette', headed: 'New Taxes', and 'Bankru[pts]', his left hand plunged in his breeches pocket. Behind him on the chimney-piece is a pair of scales for weighing guineas. His wife, bald-headed and stout, leans back in an arm-chair, her hands raised in protest at an unpowdered wig which a grotesquely thin and ragged French hairdresser (left) proffers obsequiously. A fashionably dressed young man with cropped hair looks with surprise at his reflection in an oval mirror over the chimney-piece. His mouth is half-covered by his swathed neckcloth, he wears a short spencer over a sparrow-tail coat, and half-boots. A young woman with over-dressed but unpowdered (red) hair looks with dismay at her reflection in a mirror which she has snatched from the wall. On the wall is an oval bust portrait of 'Charles 2d', his tiny head framed in an immense powdered wig.
Plan your visit. 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.
Plan your visit. 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.
Leaving off powder, or, A frugal family saving the guinea / Js. Gy. desn. et fect.
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James Gillray
1756-1815
Leaving off powder, or, A frugal family saving the guinea / Js. Gy. desn. et fect.
hand colored etching
image: 24.5 x 34.5 cm; plate: 25 x 35.3 cm; sheet: 26.2 x 36.5 cm
Purchased by J. Pierpont Morgan, 1900.
Peel 2856
Published:
[London] : H. Humphrey, 1795.
Provenance:
Formerly owned by Sir Robert Peel.
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