Coloured engraving: 'Copy of the Transparency exhibited at Ackermann's Repository of Arts, During the Illuminations of the 5th and 6th of November, 1813, In Honour of the Splendid Victories obtained by The Allies over the Armies of France, at Leipsic

Author: 
Thomas Rowlandson [Rudolph Ackermann, Repository of Arts, Strand, London; Napoleon Bonaparte; Regency caricature]
Publication details: 
Date, place and publisher not stated. [London: R. Ackermann, 1813.]
£250.00
SKU: 7412

On a piece of good wove paper, roughly 415 x 260 mm. Dimensions of engraving 180 x 220 mm. On aged paper and with the margins of the leaf trimmed. Laid down along the right hand margin runs a strip of blue paper, 30 x 410 mm, which it may be possible for a professional restorer to remove. This edges the border of the print (which is clear and entire) and overlaps a few letters of the text. Neatly coloured in sombre tones. Beneath the print is the title (which ends 'at Leipsic and its environs.'), and beneath the title is an eleven-line section of text, headed 'THE TWO KINGS OF TERROR.', beginning 'THIS Subject, representing the two Tyrants, viz. the Tyrant BONAPARTE and the Tyrant DEATH, sitting together on the Field of Battle'. Death is seated on a cannon, with one foot on a pile of cannonballs and the other on a broken French eagle, facing a dejected Bonaparte, seated on a drum. In the background the massed ranks of the allies, their four flags flying drive the retreating French from the field. The final four-line paragraph reads 'The above description of the subject appeared in the Sun of Saturday, the 6th of November. These pointed comments arose from the picture being transparent, and from a Circle, indicative of the strength and brotherly union of the Allies, which surmounted the same, composed of gas of brilliant brightness.'