Pen and brown ink, blue wash, and brown wash on medium, slightly textured, cream wove paper
Dimensions:
Sheet: 9 1/4 × 14 5/8 inches (23.5 × 37.1 cm)
Credit Line:
Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
Copyright Status:
Public Domain
Accession Number:
B1977.14.5214
Gallery Label:
In the 182os Edward Francis Burney wrote his own sequel to William Cowper’s enormously popular ballad The Diverting History of John Gilpin of 1782. Cowper’s poem described the escapades of a frugal London tradesman who was persuaded by his wife to take a holiday at Edmonton to celebrate their wedding anniversary, only to be thwarted by a runaway horse. Burney planned to illustrate his sequel, and this design belongs to that unfinished project. Here Gilpin is caught like a latter-day Hercules between two waiters on a pleasure boat anxious for his custom. Gallery label for Great British Watercolors from the Paul Mellon Collection at the Yale Center for British Art (Yale Center for British Art, 2008-06-09 - 2008-08-17)
