1790. The Duenna and Little Isaac. Engraved by W. P. Carey.
1791
THE PROSPECT BEFORE US. NO. 1.
January 13, 1791. [The Prospect before us]. No. 1. Humanely inscribed to all those Professors of Music and Dancing whom the cap may fit. Published by S. W. Fores, Piccadilly.—The possible future condition of the foreign artists located within our shores, the performers at the Italian Opera, seems to have provoked three large cartoons from Rowlandson's graver at the beginning of 1791. The straits to which these fashionable exotics, it was suggested, might be reduced by the decaying state of the theatre in which they had been playing are more particularly dwelt on in this and a later caricature. It appears it was found necessary to close their house for restorations, which, if the state of things hinted in [Chaos is Come Again] (February 4, 1791), may be considered in any way prophetic, was resolved on none too soon. The Prospect before us evidently offers the choice of two conditions. The first seems to have been an appeal to the charitable, pending the construction of a new Opera House; the second, which was accepted, being the conversion of the Pantheon into a theatre; a substitute which in the end accidentally proved equally deplorable.
We first find the professors of music, singing, and dancing thrown on the vicarious exercise of their talents as a wandering troupe round the town. The model of the new house is borne as a plea to the benevolent, much on the principle of the disabled sailors who, tramping the streets, singing and begging, carried the model of their ship, to tempt the liberality of the almsgiving public.
A sweeper-lad is dropping a copper into the laced hat of one of the French dancers, whose figure is probably intended for that of Didelot, one of the highest paid and most popular performers in his walk on our stage. A butcher, with evident sympathies for imported art, is compassionately dropping a bullock's heart into the hat of an elderly artist, whose figure may possibly be intended for that of old Vestris.