High Spirits - The Comic Art of Thomas Rowlandson

Yesterday I went through to Edinburgh to accompany esmerelda_t to a viewing of the exhibition High Spirits: The Comic Art of Thomas Rowlandson at the Queen's Gallery at the Palace of Holyrood House. The exhibition is drawn from the Royal Collections and it's really rather splendid. It's beautifully curated and there's lots of information to identify the characters Rowlandson is lampooning and to explain the political and social context of the era. There's also an excellent website accompanying the exhibition here, which includes high resolution downloadable images of every caricature on display, along with this rather entertaining animation narrated by none other than BRIAN BLESSED.

Rowlandson is probably my favourite of the Georgian caricaturists, as he rarely has quite such a vicious edge as Cruikshank and Gillray. Also he drew the most delightfully joyful porn! How could anyone forget New Feats of Horsemanship?! To say nothing of A Sailor's Farewell? And therein lies my one criticism of the exhibition. There's no porn! In fact there's barely even any smut. So although it's an excellent exhibition, I'm not sure how representative it is of Rowlandson's work. Of course it's possible that there isn't any smut in the Royal Collection, but given that many of these images were collected by George IV I don't believe that for one minute! We suspect that Her Maj is keeping all the smut for herself ;)

This is the only image that hints at Rowlandson's earthier artistic talents. Though as esmerelda_t pointed out, it does prove that the randy plumber has been a standard porn trope for over two hundred years!