Contemporary references further describe these 'night auctions,' where the caricaturist's drawings frequently figured, and which Rowlandson occasionally attended, in company with his friends Mitchell the banker, Parsons and Bannister the comedians, Antiquity Smith, Iron-wig Heywood, Caleb Whiteford, and other dilettanti. See page 70.
THE PEA CART.
1788 (?). [The Pea-cart].
1789.
Several of the prints included under our description of the political caricatures for 1789 are confessedly of somewhat doubtful parentage. In one or two cases, other artists, like Kingsbury, are entitled to the credit of having a share in the prints we here include with Rowlandson's works.
After carefully examining and comparing the questionable plates with those whose authenticity is certain, we have selected only such examples as we feel convinced are not altogether out of place in this volume, while we acknowledge a doubt of their precise authenticity. It is the old story of the engraver with more than one publisher disguising his handiwork, as Gillray and other caricaturists are well known to have done, to accommodate rival print-selling firms, without appearing to depart from the loyalty due to their principal employer. In the case of Gillray, it will be remembered, his allegiance was enlisted, and in a more special manner than is usual in the relation between artist and publisher, in the interests of the Humphreys. In the instance of Rowlandson, although he did not supply any one firm with his works, to the exclusion of other publishers, at the period we are describing—and before either Mr. Ackermann, of the Strand, took our artist under his protecting care, or Mr. Tegg, of Cheapside, began to pour his cheaper caricatures into the market—it will be recognised that Rowlandson's best prints were issued by Mr. S. W. Fores, of Piccadilly. He occasionally, when a popular subject gave unusual impulse to the demand for satirical plates, supplied Mr. W. Holland of Oxford Street with his etchings, slightly varying his style as far as the manipulative portion of the engraving was concerned, but retaining all the more special features of his identity. Indeed it is doubtful if he sought to disguise his handiwork in the sense adopted by Gillray, who did not hesitate, it has been said, to produce inferior piracies, executed by his own hand, with intentional clumsiness and apparently defective skill, after his own masterpieces, to accommodate caricature-sellers who wished to secure his works otherwise than through the legitimate channel of his own publishers, who are known to have been both respectable and liberal in their dealings with this wayward and unscrupulous genius.