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The English dance of death, first volume, Plate 24: The masquerade
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A masked ball is represented at its height, gaily attended, and held in the Pantheon or some similar building. A dance is proceeding ; the most diversified scenes meet the eye on all sides, and Rowlandson has given full play to his humorous inventive faculties. In the front of the picture the crowd of merrymakers, all unthinking and unprepared, are horrified to discover a new turn abruptly given to the travesty ; the tall figure of Death has suddenly cast away his disguising domino, and holding aside a demoniac mask, is revealing to the terrified spectators the actual figure of the skeleton-destroyer, armed with his dart, and in grim earnest to strike.
Courtesy of Boston Public Library
Thomas Rowlandson - English caricaturist of the 18th and early 19th centuries Britain, known for his humor, caricatures, satirical drawings, and watercolors, a popular artist in the Regency period in England.
Thomas Rowlandson (1757–1827) was an English artist and caricaturist of the Georgian Era, noted for his political satire and social observation. A prolific artist and printmaker, Rowlandson produced both individual social and political satires, as well as large number of illustrations for novels, humorous books, and topographical works. Like other caricaturists of his age such as James Gillray, his caricatures are often robust or bawdy. Rowlandson also produced highly explicit erotica for a private clientele; this was never published publicly at the time and is now only found in a small number of collections. His caricatures included those of people in power such as the Duchess of Devonshire, William Pitt the Younger and Napoleon Bonaparte.
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