Tim Bobbin caricature. Intemperance & Ridicule. Collier engraving, c1810.

$165.00

Intemperance & Ridicule antique print. Great companion to Drunkeness caricature.

Original copperplate engraving with contemporary hand-colour by John Collier, for The Passions Humorously Delineated, a series of caricatures published in 1810 by London Bond Street print publisher, Edward Orme  – and  "Respectfully Inscribed to the Noblemen, Gentlemen, and Tradesmen of Lancashire: more particularly of MANCHESTER, by the Publifher (sic)."

Under the pseudonym of Timothy Bobbin, British satirist John Collier (1708-1786), worked as a painter, producing inn signs, painting panels and popular grotesque caricatures. A Liverpool merchant distributed his caricatures widely – as far as the American colonies. Collier and his wife had 9 children. He earned additional income by writing satirical verse (in Lancashire dialect). He promoted and distributed his own work around northern England – collecting and delivering orders and commissions for books and pictures, while spending his proceeds as he travelled. In 1773 Tim Bobbin
 described himself as 'the Lancashire Hogarth' when he published his Human Passions Delineated with "..120 Figures, Droll, Satyrical (Satirical), and Humourous (Humorous): Designed in the Hogarthian Style.."

Edward Orme republished 25 of Collier's caricatures in London in 1810 for this edition. The Victorian antiquary, W.E. Axon, described Collier's caricatures as "execrable… gross and cruel". The Dictionary of National Biography declared them "grotesque" and "absolutely devoid of artistic merit". Perhaps Collier's caricatures were a little grotesque, but they were intended to entertain – and have been doing so for hundreds of years.

Page size, 210 x 267mm (8 1/4 x 10 1/2 inches). To intaglio impression, 163 x 213mm (6 3/8 x 8 3/8 inches). Good condition except for minor age soiling in margin.

Out of stock