From the desk to the thorne. A new quick step by Joseph Bonaparte the bass by messrs nappy and tally.

Thomas Rowlandson after George Saulez

From the desk to the thorne. A new quick step by Joseph Bonaparte the bass by messrs nappy and tally.

London, R Ackerman, August 18^th 1808

Etching

Original hand colouring

340 x 240 mm

£380

Joseph, neatly dressed as an avocat, takes an enormous step from the rail of a desk (r.) on which his right. toe is poised to a wall ‘Map of Spain & Portugal’ on a level with his shoulders, where his left. toe touches ‘Madrid’. His hands are raised above his head to clutch at a mass of fringed cushions on which is the crown of ‘Spain’, with a sceptre. On the wall is pinned a notice: ‘Notary Public Bayonne’. Four clerks sit facing each other at the desk he has left, which has double slopes, divided by the low rail from which he steps. One asks: “Why Joseph wither art thou going”; he looks down answer: “Whither – but to fill my high destiny? And like my noble Brother Sway tne Sceptre of another.” The other clerks say respectively:
“But proverbs tell of many Slips
Between the tankard & the lips
And really I am apt to give
The proverb credit as I live”
and “He must needs go whom the Devil drives and should it cost his Neck; Ownds! what a prodigious step for a Notary’s clerk.”