A good shot, or, Billy-Ranger the Game Keeper in a fine sporting country

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James Gillray
1756-1815
A good shot, or, Billy-Ranger the Game Keeper in a fine sporting country
hand colored etching
sheet 26 x 36 cm
Purchased by J. Pierpont Morgan, 1900.
Peel 2764
Published: 
[London] : Pubd. Feby. 1st, 1792, by H. Humphrey, N. 18 Old Bond Street, [1 February 1792]
Provenance: 
Formerly owned by Sir Robert Peel.
Notes: 

Title from caption.
Printmaker from British Museum catalogue.
Three lines of text below title: He shoots a good shot; it will do a mans heart good to see him; he will charge you & discharge you ...

Summary: 

Grenville (left) stands in St. James's Park in profile to the right, firing a gun with a wide barrel at a group of winged money-bags, &c, flying in the upper right corner of the design, rising on smoke issuing from the chimneys of 'Buckingham House'. A pen in his round hat indicates his Secretaryship. Dead game hangs from his person: a hare whose body is a money-bag inscribed 'Secretaryship of State £7000 pr Ann.', a goose, whose similar body is inscribed 'Sinecures £9000pr Ann.', and two goslings, respectively 'Private Pension £4000' and '£3000 pr Ann.' The central bird at which he fires at close range is a winged document: 'Ranger of the Park'; winged bags are '75000 pr Ann', '3000 pr Ann', and '7000 pr Ann'. All these he hits. A winged ducal coronet is flying up towards the line of fire. A group of dogs with human faces surrounds him; they lick his boots, look up at him expectantly, or watch the shot; one has a collar inscribed 'Whitehall'. The southern part of the east front of Buckingham House fills the right part of the design.

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