Happy Peasant

Date1771

After work by Henry William Bunbury 1750 - 1811

Publisher Matthew Darly ca. 1720 - 1780

Publisher Mary Darly 1760 - 1781

Engraver M. Darly

OriginEngland, London

MediumHand-colored etching with line engraving

DimensionsOverall: 8 1/2 × 5 1/2in. (21.6 × 14cm)
Other (Plate): 6 × 4in. (15.2 × 10.2cm)

Credit LineMuseum Purchase

Object number1955-62,15

DescriptionUpper right corner reads: "14"
Within that plate reads: "HWB"
Lower margin reads: "HAPPY PEASANT/ Pub..d according to Act of Parl..t Augt 2..d: 1771 by MDarly 39 Strand."Label TextThe print is plate 14 from volume I of six volumes of Mary and Matthew Darly's "24 Caricatures by Several Ladies Gentleman Artists &c." This caricature depicts a peasant (probably French) wearing an old-fashioned coat with deep cuffs and no collar, and large wooden shoes or sabots. The rosy-red cap (which looks as if it were knitted) may signify he is a peasant. He carries a large broad-brimmed hat in his arms and a pipe in one hand. His hair is combed straight down and is scraggly around the shoulders.

The Darly's were a husband-and-wife team capitalized on the craze for caricatures, the practice of making a likeness with exaggerated mannerisms or features to create a comic effect, a form that was brought back by aristocratic Britons who visited Italy on the Grand Tour. The Darly’s catered to this audience by publishing a prolific assortment of caricature prints during the 1770s. Many of the Darly's satirized the manners and fashions of the macaroni, a term used to describe a sub-culture of fashionably dressed men during the period, and subsequently, regardless of subject, the Darly's prints were known as "macaroni prints."

Their most famous work was their encyclopedic "Caricatures" which included prints of macaroni’s as well as other interesting characters, such as macaronis, all based on their own drawings and those submitted to them by amateur artists lambasting their friends, artists, and other figures in London life. The front page of Volume I describes them as “…a Series of Drol[l] Prints consisting of Heads, Figures, Conversations and Satires upon the follies of the Age…” These prints were published in groups of 24, in six volumes that were published between 1771 and 1773. Colonial Williamsburg owns volumes 1-4.ProvenanceBefore 1955, the Old Print Shop (New York, NY); 1955-present, purchased by the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation (Williamsburg, VA).