Italian Affectation, Real Characters (1786–91)
Original title: Italian Affectation, Real Characters
kurzbeschreibung
Made between 1786 and 1791, Thomas Rowlandson's etching Italian Affectation, Real Characters stages a comic encounter in a landscape: a man kneels while a woman throws herself into a theatrical pose. The hand-coloured sheet measures 23.3 × 18.4 cm and belongs to a series of caricatures in which Rowlandson pokes fun at social affectation.
Description
The layout is deliberately lopsided. On a rock at the left a gentleman in a blue suit and white breeches kneels, looking startled. To the right a lady in a blue-and-white dress with an enormous headdress takes up more of the picture; her posture is exaggerated on purpose. Trees and rocks form a natural yet stylised setting. Blues and greys carry the colour, white adds accents, and a hint of pink glimmers on the headdress. The woman rules the arrangement; the man yields to her.
Context
Rowlandson produced this caricature in the age of Enlightenment, when satirical prints were in great demand in England. The Real Characters series mocked the manners of the day, above all the Italian opera culture then thought affected. Rowlandson often worked with the publisher Rudolph Ackermann, who brought such sheets to a wide public. Exaggerated gestures and facial expressions were standard stock-in-trade for late eighteenth-century caricature.
Impact
Because the figures are overdone and the quiet man plays off against the expressive woman, the sheet is immediately funny. Clean lines and restrained colour pull the eye to the lady's theatrical pose, which sets the satirical tone.
Technique
For this hand-coloured etching the lines were first bitten into a copper plate, then painted over by hand with watercolours. The precise drawing and even colouring match the usual method of English caricature prints of the eighteenth century.
AI-generated description text
Source: Metropolitan Museum of Art · Public Domain (CC0 1.0)