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27. James Gillray ( 1757-1815) Tentanda via est qua ve quoque possim Tollere humo
Etching with hand coloring, 1810, 510 x 386 mm., British Museum Satires 11570. Fine impression with good period coloring on wove paper with small margins at the sides, trimmed on the platemark top and bottom; the paper lightly toned, tears repaired and creases flattened and some small edge losses in the margins. The overall appearance is quite good. The fantastic image shows William Wyndham, 1st Baron Grenville, wearing a papal crown and riding in a balloon through Oxford, the scene loaded with Catholic symbols, the streets crowded with adherents, scoffers and others quite oblivious to the scene. The occasion was the installation of Lord Grenville as Chancellor of Oxford University. Grenville had been, and continued to be, a proponent of Catholic Emancipation in Britain, something not fully accomplished until 1829, and still, in 1810, a subject of much angry dispute. The Latin title is from Virgil’s Georgics and is translated as “I too must attempt a way by which I may raise myself above the ground.” A quotation from Milton’s Paradise Lost also appears: “He steers his flight aloft, incumbent on the dusky air that felt unusual weight.” The image is rife with references and satiric portraits and an extensive description of it all is available on the website of the British Museum. The print is rare. Only two impressions of it have been at public sale in twenty years (this is apparently one of the two). |
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