Gillray (James)

, Hannah Humphrey, 1796.
a social satire playing on the popularity of Francis Wheatley’s ‘Cries of London’ series and the attendant fashion for recognisable topographical London settings. It depicts John Montagu, 5th Earl of Sandwich (1744-1814), longstanding Tory politician and Master of the Buckhounds, who shared a rakish reputation with his father, the 4th Earl, who was a close associate of Sir Francis Dashwood and member of his notorious Hellfire Club. Our subject is depicted approaching a buxom young lady street vendor, wheeling her barrow of carrots as she looks warily over her shoulder at him. He was known as ‘Jemmy Twitcher’, for his habit of twitching the apron of any girl who caught his eye, as demonstrated here with his left hand. His right hand is thrust deep in his pocket, where Gillray draws a couple of protruding small appendages with deliberate anatomical or sartorial ambiguity, doubtless the allusion in ‘dainty Sandwich-Carrots’, as the carrots in the barrow are really quite large. This apparently common occurrence (Gillray even signs the plate ‘J.s G.y ad vivam fec.t’, suggesting it was drawn from life!) is taking place on the corner of Bond Street and Little Maddox Street, outside the premises of Faulder’s bookshop, where the windows are filled with pamphlets and open books displaying the suggestive titles as ‘Rules of the Order of St Francis’, ‘Life of Servant Maids’, ‘A Chip of the Old Block’, ‘Doe Hunting, an Ode by an old Buck Hound’, ‘The Beauties of Bond Street’, and ‘A Journey thro’ Life – from Maddox Street unto Conduit Street & back again’..
355 by 250mm (14 by 9¾ inches).