File:May-Day in London (BM J,7.6).jpg

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May-Day in London   (Wikidata search (Cirrus search) Wikidata query (SPARQL)  Create new Wikidata item based on this file)
Artist

Print made by: William Blake

After: Samuel Collings
Published by: Harrison & Co
Title
May-Day in London
Description
English: From 'The Wit's Magazine', i. 161. Illustration to verses, 'May Day ... By Mr Collings', p. 191. Milkmaids with their 'garlands' and little chimney-sweepers dance to a fiddle played by a man with one leg. There are two 'garlands' or pyramids of plate arranged with greenery, ribbons, &c. One (left) is surmounted by an urn with a streamer attached to it. It was carried by two chairmen, who have put it down while one drains a tankard; the other has removed his wig to mop his forehead. The other (right), surmounted by a short brush, is on the head of a milkmaid. Other milkmaids dance; one holds out her hand to receive a coin from a woman in a doorway over which is inscribed 'Original Shaving Shop A Room for Ladies'. A projecting lantern or sign is inscribed 'Shave for a Penny. Gentlemen Dispatched in a moment'. A child leans out of the window over the door holding a rattle, a woman stands behind. Other spectators look from adjacent windows. The little 'climbing boys' are dressed up and dancing, beating their brushes on their shovels. All wear wigs, two have laced hats. One, a mere infant, is dressed chiefly in a large wig and vandyked paper frills. The street is 'Milk Street'; over a shop window is 'Peter Pi... Pewterer'. Play-bills are posted on the wall: 'Theatre Royal Drury Lane ... Jovial Crew ... May Day' and 'Pantheon ... Concert'. 1 June 1784
Etching
Depicted people Illustration to: Samuel Collings
Date 1784
date QS:P571,+1784-00-00T00:00:00Z/9
Medium paper
Dimensions
Height: 189 millimetres
Width: 226 millimetres
institution QS:P195,Q6373
Current location
Prints and Drawings
Accession number
J,7.6
Notes

(Description and comment from M.Dorothy George, 'Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires in the British Museum', VI, 1938) The shop of the 'penny-barber' shows that this is a poor neighbourhood; the milkmaids' display is less elaborate than that described by J. T. Smith, as seen by him in 1771, and their customers, before whose doors they dance, are less opulent. See 'Nollekens and his Times', 1905, pp. 19-21. In the picture of milkmaids on May Day by Hayman at Vauxhall, described by Smith (op. cit.), the fiddler was wooden-legged as in this print. Reproduced, 'Johnson's England', ed. A. S. Turberville, i. 174.

(Supplementary information) This print is related to "May-Day. An Epistle...", which appears in letterpress in the text of "The Wit's Magazine", p. 191. For William Blake's prints for "The Wit's Magazine", etched after designs by Thomas Stothard and Samuel Collings, see 1872,1109.322-26 and J,7.6.

Another impression of this print is in a scrapbook in the British Museum collection, reg. no. 1979,1110.25 (not yet catalogued on-line, as of 12th July 2004).
Source/Photographer https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_J-7-6
Permission
(Reusing this file)		 © The Trustees of the British Museum, released as CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

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current05:03, 15 May 2020Thumbnail for version as of 05:03, 15 May 20202,500 × 2,052 (1.31 MB)Copyfraud (talk | contribs)British Museum public domain uploads (Copyfraud/BM) Satirical prints in the British Museum 1784 #9,297/12,043

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