Private School
Etcher Thomas Rowlandson British
After James Brydges Willyams British
Publisher Thomas Rowlandson British
Not on view
In this second print of a group of eight, young boys surround a bird's nest and two prepare to throw stones at a fallen chick. They are ignored by a distant schoolmaster, and only one boy appears horrified by the cruelty that a companion shows to a butterfly. Related text by Willyams, who also designed the image, suggests satirically that cruel children will grow up to be sucessful adults and that the main purpose of grammar school is to rid them of soft-heartedness. The author-designer was a university-educated lieutenant-colonel from Cornwall who also supplied supporting satirical text under the pseudonym Joel McCringer. Rowlandson, who etched the print, imbues the figures with his own characteristic elegance which does not disguise the dark human impulses being satirized. Like Hogarth's "First Stage of Cruelty," the image implies that boys allowed to mistreat small creatures will grow up to do far worse.
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