Original antique engraving by James Gillray. From the Bohn edition of 1851, using Gillray's original copper plates. With later hand colouring.
James Gillray's 1801 satirical print, "A Cognocenti contemplating ye Beauties of ye Antique," is a complex and pointed caricature primarily targeting Sir William Hamilton, a renowned diplomat and antiquary, and his wife Emma's notorious affair with Admiral Lord Nelson. The print uses Hamilton's collection of antiquities as an extended visual metaphor for his being a cuckold, a situation he was famously blind to.
Gillray depicts Sir William Hamilton as an old, stooping figure, examining his collection through reversed spectacles, symbolizing his failure to see the truth of his domestic situation. The various "antiquities" on the table and walls are all allusions to the love triangle:
In the center is a broken bust of "Lais," a famous Greek courtesan, whose face resembles Lady Hamilton. This refers to Emma's past as a mistress and model before her marriage to Hamilton.
Next to the bust is a headless figure holding grapes, an allusion to Emma's famous "attitudes," or poses, that imitated classical sculptures to entertain guests.
A small, weeping Cupid statue with a broken arrow sits on the table, symbolizing the fractured state of the Hamiltons' marriage and Emma's affair with Nelson.
Behind the bust is a term with the head of an ox, inscribed "Apis". The horns of the bull point towards images of Emma and Nelson on the back wall, a blunt reference to Hamilton being a cuckold.
On the back wall hang two paintings titled "Cleopatra" (Emma, depicted bare-breasted and holding a gin bottle) and "Mark Anthony" (Nelson, a reference to the classical and Shakespearean love story, but also questioning Nelson's public duty). A third image titled "Claudius" (Hamilton) faces away from the others and is surmounted by cuckold horns.
The print also features an erupting volcano in the background, a sexual innuendo that also references the Hamiltons' home near Mount Vesuvius in Naples, where the affair began.
The entire image is a masterful piece of Georgian graphic satire, using Hamilton's passion for collecting to comment on a very public scandal.
Gillray was one of five children, and the only one to survive to maturity. In 1770 he was apprenticed to Harry Ashby, a London writing in engraver, and five years later W. Humphrey published a few of Gillray's illustrations including satirical works. By the time Gillray commenced his career satire was old, but personal caricature was in its infancy. Other exponents in this form of art were soon overshadowed by Gillray's superior craftsmanship. His figures were full of vitality, titillating and reflective of some political crisis or private scandal. As his popularity increased so did demand by the public to see more of his work. In the rapidly changing politics of the late18th century he would produce a plate in twenty-four hours. Although sometimes overlooked his speech bubbles were elaborate and Gillray would spend considerable time composing and redrafting the text.
Between 1791 to 1807 his career continued successfully in association with William and Hannah Humphrey. There after Gillray's health began to suffer. He eventually slipped into madness and died shortly before the Battle of Waterloo on June 1st 1815. Hannah, who had a close relationship with him nursed Gillray through out his final years and following his death the copper plates then formed part of Hannah's estate when she died in 1818. The executor's of Hannah's estate sold Gillray's painstakingly worked plates for there second hand copper weight. Hearing of this, the then publisher, Bohn who had previously expressed an interest in buying the plates set about purchasing them from a variety of different sources. Eventually acquiring over 500. In 1851 Bohn republished the engravings in a large folio volume, "The Works of James Gillray".
