[Rarebooks] fa: THOMAS ROWLANDSON - "PIDGEON HOLE" at COVENT GARDEN THEATRE - 1811

[ArCh]

Listed now, auctions ending MONDAY, Monday, May 5. Images and more details can be found at the URL below or by searching for the seller name arch_in_la. 

http://tinyurl.com/y5h7lppd

Thanks,
Ardwight Chamberlain
Ann Arbor, MI, USA


Thomas Rowlandson: Pidgeon Hole. A Convent[sic] Garden Contrivance to Coop up the Gods. London: Thomas Tegg, [1811, but possibly later]. Inscription: "Tegg's Caricatures no. 57. Rowlandson, Del. Thos, Tegg no. 111 Cheapside." Hand-colored etching; 435 x 278 mm (17 1/8 x 10 7/8 in). Margins with staining, wear, and several closed tears, two of which extend into the image.

A satirical depiction of the cheap seats in the newly rebuilt Covent Garden Theatre. Way up in the uppermost balcony, a.k.a. the Gods or the nosebleed section (quite literally in this case, as demonstrated by the gentleman at the lower-left), spectators are crammed into what were commonly called "pigeon holes," through which, if they were lucky, they could just make out the performers' feet. "A close-up view of one of the 'pigeon holes' which flanked the upper gallery at Covent Garden. Heads closely packed together are framed in the lunette opening, six or seven rows receding one above the other in the centre. Most seem suffering from heat or discomfort, and except for one or two pretty young women are grotesquely caricatured. The centre figure in the front row, leaning on the parapet and apparently asleep, is a fat coachman in livery. An old man leans over, bleeding copiously at the nose..." (M. Dorothy George, Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires in the British Museum, IX, 1949). BM Satires 11797; Grego ii. 200-1.