A barber shaving a man in his shop in 1825. Wood engraving after F. Barnard, 1875.

"'Fifty years ago.' This is the title of the picture, by Mr. F. Barnard, which is in the present autumn exhibition at Liverpool, and an engraving of which forms our Extra Supplement. The subject is a barber's shop of the old-fashioned style, in which the operation of shaving is performed, we hope, with competent skill and care, by a merry British Figaro, who has many a jest to fling meantime at the other customers in waiting. The motto which Mr Barnard has chosen for this scene is a couplet of didactic verse upon the comparison between the application of satire and the use of a keen and polished razor. But it does not seem quite correct to affirm, of either the intellectual or the corporeal detersive instrument, that it should "wound with a touch that's neither felt nor seen." The touch of the cutlery blade in a barber's hands is not expected to wound at all, but its effect should be visible in the smoothness and cleanness of the patient's cheek and lip. The trenchant or penetrating edge or point of satire must be felt by those who are subjected to its administration, unless they be extremely stupid; but it need not, in every case, be intended to inflict a painful wound on the self-consciousness of anyone present, or to hurt the reputation of those absent from the company to be amused thereby. Mr. Barnard, however, supplies in this clever bit of pictorial comedy all the suggestions which belong to its due interpretation. We should have had the late Charles Dickens, in the earliest and most cheerful exercise of his genius as a humourist, to report the lively gossip of the old-fashioned country barber."--Illustrated London news, loc. cit.

In the right-hand foreground a seated man holds a copy of the journal 'John Bull'

[London] : [Illustrated London news], [1875]

1 print : wood engraving ; image 31 x 40.8 cm

Wellcome Collection 30114i