The Cameleopard, or a new hobby
Attributed to William Heath ('Paul Pry') British
Subject George IV, King of Great Britain and Ireland British
Subject Elizabeth Conyngham, Marchioness Conyngham British
Not on view
Heath's design for a printed caricature shows George IV seated astride a high-stepping giraffe accompanied by his mistress Lady Conyngham. The king wears a straw hat with wide curving brim and the lady a large bonnet--in the related print she wears a tiara and feathers--with two Nubians bowing at right. The satire responds to a giraffe, then called a cameleopard, that the Pasha of Egypt presented to the king in 1827. The animal arrived at Windsor on August 13, and Lord Marlborough wrote to The Times the following day, "everybody was so much engrossed by talking of the cameleopard who has just arrived, that nothing else seemed to be thought of." Until its death two years later, the giraffe was a popular subject for satirical printmakers.
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