Over Weight – or the Sinking Fund – or the Downfall of Faro

Richard Newton

Over Weight – or the Sinking Fund – or the Downfall of Faro

London, S W Fores 14th March 1797

Etching

Original hand colouring

275 x 370 mm

Trimmed within platemark, slight loss and repairs to top of image.

£480

A rare Newton caricature. Lady Buckinghamshire, enormously fat, is seated in profile to the right in an open chariot which sinks through a rectangular aperture in front of the Weigh-House, its weight being too great for the apparatus for weighing wagons. She throws up her arms and one leg, dropping her whip and reins. The hind legs of the plunging horses are in the pit; they snort wildly; the chariot and horses resemble those of Phaeton burlesqued. On the chariot is an oval escutcheon with four quarterings (cards, dice, wine-bottle, and glass) and the letter ‘B’. On the right (behind) are two street-lamps on tall pyramidal posts