High Spirits: the comic art of Thomas Rowlandson

Fun exhibition at the Queen’s Gallery looking at the work of the 18th century caricaturist Thomas Rowlandson.

The exhibition was well laid out with a short section telling you the artists and the main characters in the pictures, the nice section looking at how he treated specific events then a final section looking at how the prints were sold.

There were good descriptions of the works telling you about the events many of which are now forgotten. They were so good that when you then looked at the picture you did chuckle. They still worked partly because they played on basic human characteristics and stereotypes which don’t change.

I was lucky to be in the gallery at the time a short talk given by one of their always friendly attendants. She talked about the scandal around the Duke of York and Mary Ann Clarke and a fraud trial against him at  which she was star witness. Rowlandson did over 30 works on this story which was one of the stories featured in the show. She really brought it to life and I was particularly interested in what happened to Mary Ann afterwards as she didn’t die until 1854.

I liked the end wall which was set up in a dense hang to represent the window of a print shop and how most people would have seen the pictures. As an art/cultural blogger I’d have been down there every week pressing my nose against the window!

Closes 14 February 2016.

Review
Evening Standard

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