University
Etcher Thomas Rowlandson British
After James Brydges Willyams British
Publisher Thomas Rowlandson British
Not on view
In this fourth print of a group of eight, a university tutor quizzes a student on Euclid—finding the latter unprepared after a night of partying. The student holds his head and sips a tonic as a young woman peeps out from a cupboard and male friends look around a bedroom door. Prints on the wall that depict a nude and horserace point to the student's true interests, while a caricature of his tutor demonstrates his lack of respect for authority. Rowlandson etched this set 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.
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