A sphere projecting against a plane

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James Gillray
1756-1815
A sphere projecting against a plane
etching, hand-colored
image: 267 x 213 mm; plate: 271 x 225 mm; sheet: 271 x 235 mm
Purchased by J. Pierpont Morgan, 1900.
Peel 2759
Published: 
[London] : Pubd. Jany. 3d. 1792 by H. Humphrey, N. 18 Old Bond Street, [1792]
Provenance: 
Formerly owned by Sir Robert Peel.
Notes: 

Printmaker from BM Satires.

Summary: 

William Pitt, very thin, stands rigidly erect in profile to the right. Mrs. Hobart, immensely fat, completely fills a globe which stands on a rectangular platform on castors, and whose circumference rests against Pitt's post-like person. She looks up at him expectantly; he stares over her head with a pained expression. Beneath the title is etched: "Definitions from Euclid. Def: Ist B: 4th. A Sphere, is a Figure bounded by a Convex surface; it is the most perfect of all forms; its Properties are generated from its Centre; and it possesses a larger Area than any other Figure. - Def: 2d B: Ist A Plane, is a perfectly even & regular Surface, it is the most Simple of all Figures ; it has neither the Properties of Length or of Breadth ; and when applied ever so closely to a Sphere, can only touch its Superficies, without being able to enter it - Vide. Euclid, illustrated; by the Honble Mrs Circumference."

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