[Flemish characters]

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James Gillray
1756-1815
[Flemish characters]
etching
image: 293 x 364 mm; plate mark: 311 x 365 mm; sheet: 326 x 380 mm
Purchased by J. Pierpont Morgan, 1900.
Peel 2248
Published: 
[London] : [Hannah Humphrey?], [1793].
Provenance: 
Formerly owned by Sir Robert Peel.
Notes: 

Title from later published impressions of the two prints created from the original single plate.
No lettering or inscriptions.
The original state of Gillray's print, with two horizontal designs executed on a single plate, later cut in two and issued individually by George Humphrey in 1822, with an additional piece of copper joined to each design to extend it into a separate print.

Summary: 

Two designs on the same plate; the upper design showing a scene at the door of a Flemish church (right) in a small square, with a procession of little girls, uniformly dressed, wearing aprons and sabots, each with a large book under her arm, entering the church, the smallest in the rear; they are followed (left) by a fat Flemish woman wearing a hooded cloak, a book in her hand, a birch-rod hanging from her wrist; on the extreme left a little boy walks between his stout parents, taking a hand of each, and behind, three men are indicated, also with books; on the right three nuns approach the door, skirting the wall of the church, a crucifix in a niche shown above their heads. The lower design shows a scene in the market-square of a Flemish town with a row of booths on the left; under the projecting roof of one of them, a fat woman sits behind a table on which is a teetotum, with an arrow swinging on a dial; she is surrounded by men who proffer coins, as a small boy gapes at this gambling scene. On the right a town-crier reading from a paper and ringing his bell is the chief figure of a group: a peasant woman carrying milk-pails on a yoke, four men, two little girls, a dog. In the right centre priests listen intently to one of their number who stands in back view reading from a paper. Behind (left), a monk takes a woman by the chin. In the background British guardsmen, standing stiffly at attention, are being drilled. Cf. British Museum online catalog.

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