(The hopes of the family – an admission at the university)

Thomas Rowlandson After Henry Bunbury

(The hopes of the family – an admission at the university)

London, ca. 1828

Etching and stipple

Original hand colouring

170 x 250 mm

£125.

Similar to and perhaps related to a series of small copies by Rowlandson of earlier Bunbury satires, published by Ackermann in 1803, this example printed on Whatman paper of 1828

a satire on a socially aspirational family: a youth is being examined by a tutor for admission to Cambridge university; the tutor, in academic robes, is seated at a table pointing at a large volume resting beside a globe; the youth stands counting on his fingers while his eager father, wearing countryman’s boots, urges him on; on the left a woman, probably the tutor’s housekeeper, holds two further volumes, and on the right an elegant undergraduate stands smiling; on the wall behind are portraits of “Dr Allcock” and a woman, a Roman bust with turned down mouth on the lintel above the door, and a frame with the plan and elevation of a building.