The Power of Beauty; – St. Cecilia charming the Brute;- or – The seduction of the Welch Ambassador.

James Gillray

The Power of Beauty; – St. Cecilia charming the Brute;- or – The seduction of the Welch Ambassador.

London, H. Humphrey, Feb. 1792

Etching

Original hand colouring

250 x 350 mm

Overall light browning

£480

Lady Cecilia Johnston (three-quarter length), seated in an armchair in profile to the left, leans forward to kiss the nose of a large goat which puts a hoof on her chest. The goat identified by Grego as Sir W. W. Wynn, but improbably; see BMSat 8157: he was only nineteen, having succeeded his father in 1789. To Gillray Lady Cecilia embodied aged and repulsive coquetry. She was ironically called ‘the divine’ by the King and Queen (‘Harcourt Papers’, vi. 30, 34) and by Walpole, who also called her (1795) ‘the anti-divine’. ‘Letters’, xv. 314, 357. He writes of her narrow mind ‘that never cultivated any seed but that of wormwood!’ BM 8156