Summer

Carington Bowles after John Collet
Summer.
London, Carington Bowles c. 1780
Mezzotint
360x250mm
£400
Fine strong impression. A fat, sweating cit (who pulls off his hat and wig to wipe his bald head), accompanied by his skinny, shrewish, fashionably dressed wife, walks past a young ladies seminary and a signpost to White Conduit House. A small page carrying a lapdog and a shawl struggles along behind the couple, and a small girl tries to sell them fresh peas. In the background the young ladies lean from the upper window of their school, in order to gaze through a telescope at a group of young, naked boys swimming in the river. Evidently a scene at Sadler’s Wells.