[Buguet (Henri)]

a strikingly resonant satire of the world of English political elections by Henri Buguet (1761-1847), an artist who under Jacques Louis David, who was also an illustrator and print-maker, his recorded caricatures often took the English as their subject, often with puns in their titles, ‘Lord-gueil, Lady-scorde..’ (Pride and Discord?), the romantic ‘Lord-ible..’, the dancing ‘Lord-tolan..’ and so on, for a series of ‘Passions’, with this rather more obscure electoral pun seeming to stand alone, depiting a grotesque character haranguing his audience, with fists flying amongst the rabble below, with more aloof grandees look on cynically in the background, while an uncaricatured and elegant lady in the centre foreground looks past her heavy veil as she makes a donation, or pays a bribe, to a tradesman to the right, perhaps an echo of the era of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, the ardent supporter by various means of Charles James Fox,

original hand-coloured engraving on laid paper, 345 x 225 mm. (13 5/8 x 8 7/8 in), trimmed on or just within the platemark, but well outside the image and title, [BM Satires 9900],