A Snug Birth in a Shower

William Heath ('Paul Pry') British

Not on view

This fashion satire proposes a practical application for the huge broad-brimmed hats fashionable in London in the late 1820s, showing a woman wearing a green dress using her hat to protect two dandies from the rain. Both have exaggerated hair and whiskers, and carry furled umbrellas but note that they find the present arrangement much more to their liking. Like many of Heath's prints from this period, it is signed with a small top-hatted dandy holding an umbrella–Paul Pry, a nosy character from a play.

A Snug Birth in a Shower, William Heath ('Paul Pry') (British, Northumbria 1794/95–1840 Hampstead), Hand-colored etching

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