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Public School

Etcher Thomas Rowlandson British
Publisher Thomas Rowlandson British
May 10, 1802
Not on view
In this third print of a group of eight, teenagers drink punch to excess at a boarding school--one vomits and another has passed out under the table. A schoolmaster does nothing to intervene, and simply holds up an empty carafe in disbelief. The image echoes Hogarth's "A Modern Midnight Conversation" (1733; MMA 91.1.77) where men, supposedly gathered for discourse, drink the night away. The print comes from a set that Rowlandson etched after drawings by Willyams, a university-educated lieutenant-colonel from Cornwall who also supplied supporting satirical text under the pseudonym Joel McCringer. Rowlandson's characteristic elegance does not disguise the dark human impulses being satirized. Modern education, it is suggested, does little to teach self-control, wisdom or empathy.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: Public School
  • Series/Portfolio: A Compendious Treatise on Modern Education: Title and 8 plates
  • Etcher: Thomas Rowlandson (British, London 1757–1827 London)
  • Artist: After James Brydges Willyams (British, Cornwall 1772–1820 Truro, Cornwall)
  • Publisher: Thomas Rowlandson (British, London 1757–1827 London)
  • Date: May 10, 1802
  • Medium: Hand-colored etching
  • Dimensions: Sheet: 10 1/16 in. × 13 in. (25.5 × 33 cm)
    Plate: 8 15/16 × 10 13/16 in. (22.7 × 27.5 cm)
  • Classification: Prints
  • Credit Line: The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1959
  • Object Number: 59.533.851(5)
  • Curatorial Department: Drawings and Prints

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