And check out his newest http://theprintshopwindow.
I
think the best satire always contains an element of universality which
transcends the specific time and place of its creation and speaks to
modern audiences just as powerfully as it did to previous generations.
That is one of the things I really like about this unassuming print
which was published by S.W. Fores on 9th August 1817.
It
shows four small scenes of small animals being stalked by various
predators who attempt to justify their actions in the speech bubbles
provided. In the top left-hand corner, as pack of foxes approach a
gaggle of unsuspecting geese, one fox says “Tis plain there is a PLOT on
foot, let’s seize them Brother Oliver” and his hunting companion
replies “I have no doubt of it. I can smell it plainly”. To the right
two vicious-looking wolves approach grazing sheep, one says; “Those
bloodthirsty wretches mean to destroy man, woman and child. I know it to
a certainty for they carry sedition, privy conspiracy and rebellion in
their looks”. His mate responds by adding “and I’ll swear it Brother
Castle let’s dash at them”. At
the bottom left of the print a cat watches a group of mice and muses
“there’s a pretty collection of rouges gather’d together, if there is
not a PLOT amongst them burn my tail and whiskers”. Finally, the image
at the lower right-hand corner shows a bird of prey swopping down on a
terrified mother hen and her chicks with a speech bubble that reads “the
worlds overrun with iniquity and these troublesome miscreants will not
let honest Hawks sleep in security”.
Specifically
the print is an attack upon the heavy-handed and repressive policies
which the British government implemented to stifle popular demands for
political and economic reform in the years immediately following the
Napoleonic Wars. In the summer of 1817 the government suspended habeas
corpus and outlawed political assemblies on the basis of secret evidence
gathered by a network of government spies which, it was alleged, proved
that British radicals were plotting an armed insurrection. Two of these
spies, John Castles*and William Oliver, are referred to by name in the
print, as they became hugely unpopular once it transpired that they had
provoked radicals into taking actions for which they were subsequently
charged and in some cases executed.
Generally
though I think the message behind this print could still apply to many
authoritarian or conservative regimes around the world today.
*
In fact John Castles was a pseudonym used in government papers to refer
to the informers Ronald Payne and John Garrod who attempted to convict
the radical James Watson following the Spa Field Riots in 1816.
Further reading;
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