The Parish Shoe Cleaner

Date1771

Publisher Matthew Darly (ca. 1720 - 1780)

Publisher Mary Darly (1760 - 1781)

Engraver M. Darly

OriginEngland, London

MediumHand-colored etching

DimensionsOverall: 8 1/2 × 5 1/2in. (21.6 × 14cm) Overall (Plate): 5 3/4 × 4 1/4in. (14.6 × 10.8cm)

Credit LineMuseum Purchase

Object number1955-62,11

DescriptionUpper right corner reads: "10"
Sign-post reads: "De Croteur/ Monsieur/ on Pratique/ Pour un Livre."
Lower margin reads: "THE PARIS SHOE CLEANER/ Pub.d accord.g to Act of Parl.t. July 1.st, 1771 by MDarly 39 Strand."
Label TextThe print is plate 10 from volume I of six volumes of Mary and Matthew Darly's "24 Caricatures by Several Ladies Gentleman Artists &c." This character was pulled from one of Henry Bunbury's other prints entitled "View on the Pont Neuf" which featured other grotesque caricatures of the French. This print depicts a tall, very thin, and obviously very poor man, seated on a stool at work. In one hand he holds a shoe, and in the other a shoe-brush, in a mid-air position, suggesting the act of polishing. He wears the large sabots (wooden shoes) but with little suggestion of stuffing to make them fit. He wears a little cocked hat of the Nivernais type with clubbed hair. His muff, an accessory associated with the French during the period, which is cloth with wide bands of fur lies on the floor in front of him.

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 1-3.