Watercolor with pen and brown ink over graphite; verso: watercolor blots on medium, moderately textured, cream wove paper
Dimensions:
Sheet: 7 3/4 x 6 inches (19.7 x 15.2 cm)
Credit Line:
Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
Copyright Status:
Public Domain
Accession Number:
B1977.14.368
Classification:
Drawings & Watercolors
Collection:
Prints and Drawings
Subject Terms:
scarf (costume accessory) | jacket | top hat | genre subject | black | white (color) | gray (color) | man
Currently On View:
Not on view
Exhibition History:
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)Great British Watercolors from the Paul Mellon Collection at the Yale Center for British Art (The State Hermitage Museum, 2007-10-23 - 2008-01-13)Great British Watercolors from the Paul Mellon Collection at the Yale Center for British Art (Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, 2007-07-11 - 2007-09-30)Rowlandson Drawings from the Paul Mellon Collection (Yale Center for British Art, 1977-11-16 - 1978-01-15)Rowlandson Drawings from the Paul Mellon Collection (Royal Academy of Arts, 1978-03-04 - 1978-05-28)
Publications:
John Baskett, The drawings of Thomas Rowlandson in the Paul Mellon Collection, Brandywine Press, New York, 1978, p. 37, no. 125, NJ18 .R79 B38 (LC) Oversize (YCBA)British Art at Yale, Apollo, vol.105, April 1977, pp. 283-284, fig. 24, N1 .A54 + OVERSIZE (YCBA)Robert Colls, This sporting life : sport and liberty in England, 1760-1960, Oxford University Press, Oxford, U.K., 2020, pp. 90, 371, 373, GV706.35 .C65 2020 (LC) YCBAVic Gatrell, The first bohemians : life and art in London's golden age, , Allen Lane, London, 2013, pp. 131-132, fig. 155, NX544.L6 G37 2013 (YCBA)Patricia Phagan, Thomas Rowlandson, pleasures and pursuits in Georgian England , Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Poughkeepsie, N.Y. London, 2011, pp. 32,33, fig. 13, NJ18 R79 P53 2011 + OVERSIZE (YCBA)John Riely, Rowlandson drawings from the Paul Mellon Collection, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, 1977, p. 87, no. 118, NJ18 .R79 R68 (LC) (YCBA)The Cunning Eye of Thomas Rowlandson, Apollo, vol.105, no. 182, April 1977, pp. 283-4, fig. 24, N1 A54 05:2 + (YCBA) Also available: N5220 M552 A7 1977 + (YCBA)Yale Center for British Art, Great British watercolors : from the Paul Mellon Collection, Yale University Press, New Haven, 2007, pp. 66-67, no. 28, ND1928 .Y35 2007 (LC)+ Oversize (YCBA)
Gallery Label:
This drawing is one of Rowlandson’s occasional forays into portraiture, although whether it portrays an actual sitter or a caricature type is debatable. While he sports a fashionable top hat and coat, the cove’s face is battered and distorted into a vision of ugliness, his hat is worn at a disreputable angle, and a leer plays upon his lips. Rowlandson invites the viewer to see him as an aging and disreputable dandy. The cove’s physical ugliness is equated to moral degeneracy, a commonplace in an age that paid serious regard to physiognomy, the “science” that taught one to determine a person’s character from facial features. 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)