Public Characters
Thomas Rowlandson British
After George Murgatroyd Woodward British
Publisher Rudolph Ackermann, London British
Not on view
Rowlandson and Woodward collaborated on this ebullient panel of heads tucked behind ribbons, as though into old-fashioned note boards.The image depicts well-known figures in politics, the theater and society. Four politicians anchor the composition. At center Charles James Fox, dark-haired and unshaven, faces his chief rival, the tall, thin, white-haired William Pitt the Younger. Between them with cropped hair stands George Tierney, a radical Whig whose outrageous remarks led to a duel with Pitt in 1797. Just above Fox is the Whig playwright and politician Richard Brinsley Sheridan, with carbuncled nose and cheeks. Among the three theatricals wearing feathered hats at the upper left are John Kemble, in profile, his sister Sara Siddons, who is being admired by the publisher-critic-caricaturist Edward Topham.
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