The gay Lothario – Vintage Wall Art
![The gay Lothario, [ca. 1803] — historic drawing](https://images.jameslantos.com/img/4d/4daacc7e2f5a-L.webp)
(Originally scanned by the Library of Congress. Each image is professionally and digitally cleaned of artifacts such as color bars and extra borders prior to printing.)
Description
Step back in time with The gay Lothario, a historic drawing rich in period detail. An authentic image from the Library of Congress, it carries the weight of the real historical record.
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The gay Lothario
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Signed by Woodward and dated about 1803, this watercolor and ink drawing mocks a gallant who proposes to take a kept woman from her current protector, an old man, and set her up in better style. The caption's businesslike tone is the joke, treating seduction as a financial arrangement. Satirical drawings like this were popular in London in the early 1800s, when cartoonists lampooned fashionable manners, money, and sex. The title alludes to Lothario, the seducer in Nicholas Rowe's 1703 tragedy *The Fair Penitent*.
| Created / published | [ca. 1803] |
|---|---|
| Medium | 1 drawing : watercolor and black and brown inks over pencil on off-white wove paper, mounted on 27.7 x 20.6 cm. (sheet), 39.3 x 32.2 cm. (mount) |
| Genre | Cartoons (Commentary) British 1800-1810.Drawings British Color 1800-1810. |
| Notes | Inscribed above image: I am Informed Madam, your present protector is an Old Man which must be a great misfortune at your time of life. -under this consideration, I mean to take you to myself with a capital establishment. Inscribed below title and crossed out: Considerate Gallant! No copyright information found with item. Signed, lower left: Woodward Delin. The version cited in the British Museum catalogue has a slightly longer caption. Title inscribed below image. Bequest and gift; Caroline and Erwin Swann; 1974; (DLC/PP-1974:232.743) Forms part of: Caroline and Erwin Swann collection of caricature and cartoon (Library of Congress). Published in: Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires Preserved in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Musuem, Vol. VIII 1801-1810 / by Mary Dorothy George. London: The British Museum, Printed by Order of the Trustees,1947 (entry #10670) |
| Subjects | Courtship--1800-1810. |
| Source | Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division |
| Original scan | 1,170 × 1,536 px · prints to 4 × 5 in at 300 dpi |
| Reference | AMZ-SOTP-HPA-173040 |
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