The Dutch Apollo!
£180.00
Charles Williams The Dutch Apollo! London, Wm Holland II, Cockspur St. June 29th 1814 Engraving (coloured impression) 250 x 350mm Trimmed to edge of plate
The Prince of Orange (on the left) dressed like a Dutchman in (English) caricature, kneels with his arms extended imploringly at the feet of Pricess Charlotte (a good portrait). He wears Apollo’s wreath, decorated with small oranges, before him is his clumsy flower-pot hat, containing a paper: Rules for ye game of ye Dutch Pins (ninepins); beside this is a Jew’s harp, a degraded form of Apollo’s lyre. His breeches are enormously bulky, and a tobacco-pipe projects froma pocket. He sings:
Lovely Maid, assuage my Anguish!
At your feet your true love sighs;
Do not let your Dutchman languish,
If you frown, alas he dies!
She answers, pointing to his breeches:
From what I feel, and what I see,
There’s nought about you that bewitches;
Unless indeed a charm may be
In a Dutchman’s great big breeches!!!
She stands beside a table (on the right) at which she has been sitting. On this are her painting materials, pencil, brushes, cakes of watercolour, porcelain palette, and a jar of water, with an open box. Her painting is on a sloping board: a fat Dutchman trudges off, a bundle at his back, in the direction of a sign-post pointing To Holland; he grasps his head despairingly. Behind the Prince a French window with draped curtains gives on to a small balcony. By the window are flowering plants ina jardinière; a sofa stands against the wall; a patterned carpet completes the design.
BM 12282
