[Rarebooks] fa: MRS. MIDNIGHT'S ANIMAL COMEDIANS - 1753 Engraved SINGERIE/Satirical Print

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now, auction ending Sunday, November 23. More details and images can be found at the URL below or by searching under the seller name arch_in_la.

http://tinyurl.com/lcew2ub

Thanks,
Ardwight Chamberlain
L.A.

John June (artist): Mrs. Midnight's Animal Comedians. To you dear Friends we hold th' instructive Glass / That ye may see your Shadows as yes pass. [London:] Publish'd according to Act of Parliament, 1753. "J June del. sc." etched at the bottom-left of the image. Copper-engraved print, measuring 345 x 242 mm (13.5 x 9.5 in.). Trimmed to the plate mark, mounted on backing; evenly browned with a few small spots. BM 1851,0308.447.

A rare and charming example of eighteenth-century singerie (French for "monkeyshines"), a genre in which monkeys are depicted as aping human behavior, most often "genteel" behavior, usually as a form  of gentle satire mocking the established social order. There are plenty of dogs here, too. The animals, dressed in the costumes of eighteenth-century London society, perform in ten scenes enacted within a stage-like proscenium divided by garlanded columns, including a "Grand Ballot[sic] Dance by the Dogs and Monkies," dog soldiers jumping over bundles of twigs to prove their agility, monkeys riding dogs "like Men on Horseback," and a large central scene depicting the "Besieging of a Town by the Dogs who are repuls'd by the Monkies within…" Two well-dressed gentlemen and a lady watch in amusement from a box at the right, the woman holding a playbill labelled "Inspector Nov 30," a visual clue that the engraving was a part of one of those vociferous literary and theatrical "paper wars" so typical of the time:

"Mrs. Midnight" was a pseudonym of the poet and satirist Christopher Smart (1722-1771) who, among other endeavors, published a "saucy" and popular magazine called The Midwife under that name. In it,  Smart, along with his friend and colleague Henry Fielding, carried on a long-running battle with John Hill, a self- (and poorly) educated hack who replied in kind via a regular column called the Inspector in the London Daily Advertiser, an "all but bogus" newspaper. In the November 30, 1752, number of the Inspector, Hill wrote a rapturous review of a show performed by a troupe of Piedmontese "Animal Comedians" which featured a reenactment of the Siege of Troy, among other feats. Hill, who had previously panned a performance by Smart's friend, the actor Henry Woodward, hinted that the animals were the better performers. Smart and his friends responded by publishing A Letter from Henry Woodward Comedian… to Dr. John Hill, lampooning the latter as a jealous, illiterate hireling with a waddling gait, and calling him a dog and a monkey himself. Hill then counterattacked in his Inspector column and the fracas rumbled on and on, culminating in the publication of Smart's mock epic poem The Hilliad. To complicate a messy business even further, during this time Smart wrote, staged and appeared in a musical burlesque, The Old Woman's Oratory, in which he played the role of "Mrs. Midnight" and in which the same troupe of "animal comedians" also performed. It was not to everyone's taste (Horace Walpole described it as "the lowest buffoonery in the world") and Smart's enemies, including Hill, used its crudity to undermine Smart's reputation as a religious poet. It's not immediately apparent which side of the feud this print is on; it might well have been commissioned by the proprietors of the Animal Comedians in order to capitalize on the brouhaha. The artist, John June (fl. 1740-1770), was an engraver and book illustrator known both for the minuteness of his style and, contrarily, the unusually large size of many of his works, e.g. The Death of Fox.