Mixing a recipe for corns

George Cruikshank

Mixing a recipe for corns

London, Thomas McLean, Aug 1^st 1835

Etching

Original hand colouring

195 x 245 mm

Trimmed to decorative border.

£240

A crowded interior. An old maid, grotesquely lean, spectacled, and hideous, sits in an arm-chair beside her fire (left) on which a concoction in a saucepan boils over, surrounded by fierce flames. This she stirs with a spoon but turns to the right to pore over the recipe, which is in her left hand. One bare foot with deformed toes rests on a stool beside which are a spike-toed high-heeled shoe and a stocking. A table beside her and the floor below it are crowded with bottles, jars, and medicaments, with a pestle and mortar and a lighted candle. The candle sets fire to her cap, and the flame reaches a little bird-cage hanging from the ceiling. A cat walks under her petticoats; a tiny lap-dog lies in a cushioned band-box lid at her feet. A second cat claws towards a mouse which runs up the pole of a perch on which stands, a draggled and angry cockatoo. A pug-dog also looks up at the bird. Against the wall is a stuffed cat in a glass case; above it is a burlesque picture of Susanna and the Elders. A neat curtained bed is on the right. The chimney-piece is decorated with Diana (burlesqued) urging on the hounds to seize Actæon. On it are three peacock’s feathers, bottles, spills, a shell, a Chinese mandarin, &c. The fireplace is lined with pictorial Dutch tiles.