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1955-62,20, Print
Connoisseur Admiring a Dark Night Peice
1955-62,20, Print

Connoisseur Admiring a Dark Night Peice

Date1771
Publisher Matthew Darly (ca. 1720 - 1780)
Publisher Mary Darly (1760 - 1781)
Designer & engraver M. Darly
OriginEngland, London
MediumHand-colored engraving with period color
DimensionsOverall: 8 1/2 × 5 1/2in. (21.6 × 14cm) Other (Plate): 6 5/16 × 4 1/4in. (16.1 × 10.8cm)
Credit LineMuseum Purchase
Object number1955-62,20
DescriptionUpper right corner reads: "19"
Lower margin reads: "A CONNOISEUR/ ADMIRING A DARK NIGHT PEICE/ Pub.d acco.g to Act of Parl.t Nov.r 12 1771 by MDarly N.o 39 Strand."
Label TextThe print is plate 19 from volume I of six volumes of Mary and Matthew Darly's "24 Caricatures by Several Ladies Gentleman Artists &c." This portrait is supposed to represent Captain Francis Grose (1731-1791), a well-known London Antiquary. He examines a blank painting with a magnifying glass and extends this arm towards a canvas framed and standing on the floor. The canvas is completely blank and black. A sword is shown across his back with handle on one side, and the end coming out his coat tails on the other. He seems to be holding forth on the merits of the "painting" 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.