A man, half human and half skeleton. Coloured etching after R. Dighton, 17--.

  • Dighton, Robert, 1752-1814.
Date:
[between 1700 and 1799]
Reference:
35845i
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About this work

Description

On the right, the (from the viewer's point of view) right side of a man as a living nobleman, with a Stowe- or Stourhead-like landscape and a still-life of objects symbolising vain pleasures: a family tree ("Pedigree"), an admission ticket to a masquerade at the Pantheon, dice, a pack of cards, golf or hockey sticks and balls, a volume of the Rambler, a lottery ticket, an invitation from Lord Bauble, and a fragment of an E.O. wheel (representing the game of chance E.O., an earlier form of roulette but with the slots marked E (even) and O (odd) instead of being coloured red and black). On the left, the (from the viewer's point of view) left side of the man as a skeleton holding a spade, and the attributes of the dead: a graveyard with monumental tombs and some bones. The sky on the death-side is stormy grey, on the life-side azure

Publication/Creation

London (No. 69 in St. Paul's churchyard) : printed for & sold by Bowles & Carver, [between 1700 and 1799]

Physical description

1 print : etching, with watercolour ; platemark 35.1 x 24.9 cm

Related material

Select images of this work were taken by the Wellcome Historical Medical Museum: WT/D/1/20/1/45/11

Lettering

Death and life contrasted or, an essay on man ... Inscriptions on the frontmost tomb: "The wages of sin is death" from Epistle to the Romans, and other quotations from the books of Job, I Peter, Psalms, and Hebrews, and from the contemporary poets Alexander Pope and Abraham Cowley

References note

British Museum, Catalogue of political and personal satires, no. 3792
David Padfield, A view of Dightons: the Dighton family, their times, caricatures and portraits, London 2007, p. 81 (watercolour; etching not found)

Notes

With companion sheet: Life and death contrasted or, an essay on woman ..., Wellcome Library catalogue no. 35838i

Reference

Wellcome Collection 35845i

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