A tète à tète conversation on recent events

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Charles Williams
1796-1866
A tète à tète conversation on recent events
hand colored etching
image: 324 x 237 mm; plate mark: 355 x 250 mm; sheet: 374 x 253 mm
Purchased by J. Pierpont Morgan, 1900.
Peel 1884
Published: 
[London] : S.W. Fores, 1805.
Provenance: 
Formerly owned by Sir Robert Peel.
Notes: 

Attributed to Charles Williams by the British Museum online catalog.
Lettered: "Pubd April 19th by S W Fores 50 Piccadilly / Folios of Caracatures lent out for the Evening."

Summary: 

John Bull sits squarely in an armchair hands on knees, turning his head to listen to Pitt (l.) with a knowing smile. Pitt, in an upright chair, leans forward, his hands, which are enormously long, held out deprecatingly. He says, with an anxious expression: "Did you ever hear any thing like it Mr Bull - and do you know they even go so far, as to say I must go out too! - What do you think of that Mr Bull?" John answers: "Come come - now - that's all Gammon. - No tricks upon Travellers [a catch-phrase]. - No - No - must not bite at every thing - it cant be. - D------n me but that's too good news to be true however." John is fat and plebeian, with ill-fitting wig, and his toes turned in. They sit on elegant gilt chairs; a carpet completes the design. John Bull perhaps represents the King.

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