High life below stairs [graphic] : as it was represented at Cashiobury the seat of The Earl of Essex ...

[London], February 23, 1774.

1 item ; 29.5 x 26.5 cm ; sheet 34 x 33 cm

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Great Britain -- England -- London, -- publication place.

272880

From dealer's description: "35. [BRETHERTON, James.] High life below stairs. As it was represented at Cashiobury the seat of The Earl of Essex ... [London.] Mr. Orde del. J.s Bretherton f[ecit]. Publish’d 23d. Feby. 1774. Print, engraved on laid watermarked paper (platemark 29.5 x 26.5cm; sheet 34 x 33cm) a few negligible tears at extremity of blank margins outside platemark, very good. Depicting a scene from a performance of High life below stairs (1759), the popular Georgian comedy by James Townley (1714-1778), this engraving was produced in 1774 by the London printmaker James Bretherton from a drawing by Thomas Orde Powlett (1746-1807) sketched at a private performance at Cassiobury Park. The play dramatised life in the London household of a wealthy Englishman with plantation estates in Jamaica, “a young West-Indian of fortune” named Lovel, the cast including two servants of Afro-Caribbean background named Kingston and Cloe. The image here shows the servant’s quarters, with Kingston and a white coachman, both drunk on their master’s wine, seated either side of the cook. The three are in conversation, each refusing to reply to the master of the household, Lovel, knocking on the door. See “curator’s comments” to BM 1948,0214.510." Ordered from Samuel Gedge, D9711, 2024-02-12, Cat. American Connections 2024, item #35.

272880