The wonderful satirical artist and caricaturist Thomas Rowlandson (1756-1827), friend of James Gillray and William Henry Bunbury, produced a huge catalogue of work. Much of his work was lewd – but quite a bit was picaresque, sentimental or just plain funny. His drawings were full of human energy. People are always up to something remarkable – tricksters, gamblers, drinkers, musicians and soldiers feature often.
In the 1792 watercolour The Elopement (the original in the Yale Center for British Art) a schoolgirl lowers herself down from the first floor on to her soldier lover’s shoulders, while his servant puts her trunk in the waiting post-chaise, preparatory to their flight north (if she’s lucky and he isn’t intent on merely seducing her and leaving her in a bordello).
In 1791 a sensational case hit the newspapers: fourteen-year-old Bristol boarding school girl (and heiress) Clementina Clarke was inveigled into a coach and taken to Gretna Green by apothecary Richard Vining Perry. The papers gleefully reported the juicy details of Clementina’s fate and her schoolmistress’s pursuit of the couple (she was too late to stop the marriage). Other elopement and seduction stories, many of which involving schoolgirls and soldiers, especially Dragoons, were common. Rowlandson knew his market and as he needed a sizeable income to sustain his addiction to gambling, he chose his subject well.
There will be a Rowlandson exhibition at The Queen’s Gallery, Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh in November 2013.