MUSLIN DRESSES UNITED KINGDOM 1802 GILLRAY UNUSUAL ANTIQUE SATIRICAL PRINT

Description: Striking and highly detaile 1802 copper engraved satiric print showing a large lady, sitting with a man and woman at a tea table, reacts in horror as a hot poker from the fire falls on her dress and sets it on fire. The man sits helplessly while the second woman upsets the table in her alarm. A butler, entering the room, drops a plate of muffins, and a cat scampers away from the fire. A painting of Mt. Vesuvius hangs over the fireplace.
 
In the January 11 issue of the Morning Post and Gazetteer (about a month before Gillray's print appeared), readers could have seen the following notice.
 
The number of persons burned to death has greatly increased since the introduction of light clothing. Ladies are forced to a nearer enjoyment of the fire and the thin muslin transparency is in a blaze in a moment.
 
The same timely warning appeared in Courier and Evening Gazette on the same day in January. And it certainly no accident that Gillray's print followed soon thereafter, appearing in what was typically the coldest month of the year in Britain.
 
Even before the Treaty of Amiens made travel and commercial exchange possible again between London and Paris, French fashion in clothing had a substantial influence on the tastes of British ladies of fashion. And in the last half of the 1790s, French fashion shifted dramatically away from "the stiffly boned corsets and brightly colored satins and other heavy fabrics that were in style in the Ancien Régime and towards a barer, sparer classical style resembling Greek statuary with high waists and clinging skirts.
 
Muslin fabric was the perfect choice for this style, because it was soft, light, and flowing, taking its form from the natural figure. And in England it was readily available through the British East India Company. But because of its thin, open weave, it was also highly flammable. And as Rae Nudson noted, quoting Deirdre Kelly, in her "A History of Women Who Burned to Death in Flammable Dresses,"
 
It's not a build-up like, 'Oh my gosh, you're smoking, let me tamp that out.' It's like, 'Ahh!' Your girlfriend beside you is a ball of fire, and you're now a ball of fire, and boom boom boom boom boom boom boom, they're all balls of fire.
 
In a hot climate like India, the flammability of muslin was not as much of an issue. But in England where the winter months were cold and raw, the fashionable, barely covered style led women to approach as near to the fire as they could with the disastrous results seen in Gillray's print.
 
Like numerous comic caricatures, Gillray here takes a serious, potentially fatal event and derives humor from it. He does so by suppressing the impulse to sympathize with the women and men around the tea table by a variety of distancing techniques: the exaggeration of form and feature which tells us that these are cartoon people with cartoon reactions, with distracting details such as the flying cup and saucer, the overturned table with the urn and teapot pouring out their contents simultaneously, the cat knocking over the poker, the servant spilling the muffins, and with a painting on the wall coincidentally providing an explosive analogue of the event below.
 
Gillray dedicated this print to the "Fashionable Ladies of Great Britain," poking fun at the vogue for white muslin dresses. Inspired by the carved drapery of Greek and Roman statues, this loose-fitting fabric was usually worn with a high Empire waist. The neoclassical tea service that is crashing to the floor alludes to other classically inspired trends emerging in London at the time.

Date: 1802 ( undated )

Dimension: Paper size approx.: cm 34,4 x 25,8

Condition: Very strong and dark impression on good paper. Sheet old original colored. All the margins missing. Small foxing and browning. Conditions are as you can see in the images. 

Engraver: James Gillray (13 August 1756 – 1 June 1815) was a British caricaturist and printmaker famous for his etched political and social satires, mainly published between 1792 and 1810. Many of his works are held at the National Portrait Gallery in London. Gillray has been called "the father of the political cartoon", with his works satirizing George III, Napoleon, prime ministers and generals. Regarded as one of the two most influential cartoonists, the other being William Hogarth, Gillray's wit and humour, knowledge of life, fertility of resource, keen sense of the ludicrous, and beauty of execution, at once gave him the first place among caricaturists.