Skip to main content

Leaving off Power, or A Frugal Family saving the Guinea, 10 March 1795

 Item — Box: LF104/3 Box 1
Reference code: LF104/3/30

Scope and Contents

Artist: James Gillray. Published: Hannah Humphrey. A domestic interior. A fat and ugly citizen, wearing old-fashioned dress with a small unpowdered wig, stands on the hearth-rug (right), his back to the fire; he is meditatively reading the 'Gazette', headed: 'New Taxes', and 'Bankru[pts]', his left hand plunged in his breeches pocket. Behind him on the chimney-piece is a pair of scales for weighing guineas. His wife, bald-headed, ugly, and stout, leans back in an arm-chair, her hands raised in protest at an unpowdered wig which a grotesquely thin and ragged French hairdresser (left) proffers obsequiously. A fashionably dressed young man with cropped hair looks with imbecile surprise at his reflection in an oval mirror over the chimney-piece. His mouth is half-covered by his swathed neckcloth, he wears a short spencer over a sparrow-tail coat, and half-boots. A young woman with over-dressed but unpowdered (red) hair looks with dismay at her reflection in a mirror which she has snatched from the wall. On the wall is an oval bust portrait of 'Charles 2d', his tiny head framed in an immense powdered wig. Description from the British Museum.

Dates

  • Creation: 10 March 1795

Conditions Governing Access

Available by appointment in our Reading Room

Extent

1 Item(s)

Language of Materials

English

Repository Details

Part of the Special Collections and Archives Repository

Contact:
Western Bank Library
University of Sheffield
Western Bank
Sheffield South Yorkshire S10 2TN United Kingdom
+44 (0) 114 222 7299