Lot 150
Hogarth, William
Jacobite, Stuart, and Scottish Applied Arts | 429
Auction: 13 May 2015 at 12:00 BST
Description
The Gate of Calais (O the Roast Beef of Old England), engraved by Hogarth and Charles Mosley, after Hogarth's oil painting, London: 1749, first state, c.39 x 49cm, framed and glazed
Footnote
Note: Unlike most contemporary engravings, this print does not reproduce the painting in reverse but shows the scene in the same way as the original. This was necessary as it includes Hogarth himself, sketching the scene at the left, and about to be arrested as a spy.
Packed with telling and wickedly observed anti-French and anti-clerical detail, the scene famously shows a miserable Highland Jacobite in his French exile, dressed in tartan and with a white cockade in his bonnet and black patches on his forehead concealing wounds. He lolls disconsolately in the right foreground accompanied by his meagre fare of an onion and a hunk of dry bread and with an empty spirit measure.
This is the first state of a print sold in 1749 at 5 shillings a copy. The plate was subsequently reworked, and the print several times reissued: originals are, however, not common.