The Grand Master

"He has covered with his never-flagging pencil enough
charta pura (white paper) to placard the whole walls of China,
and etched as much copper as would sheathe the British Navy."

During his career, Thomas Rowlandson (1756-1827) produced some ten thousand engravings, etchings, ink and watercolour illustrations, in the era known as the Golden Age of British illustration.

His satirical prints were generally funnier than his predecessor, William Hogarth and less overtly political than those of his friend and fellow Royal Academy attendee, James Gillray.

Rowlandson provided the illustrations for a series of books in which Dr William Coombe contributed the accompanying verse. Most famous among these was the 2-volume work, 'The English Dance of Death' (see previous entry). There was also the recurring character of Dr Syntax together with a final collaboration, seen in the illustrations above, in which it is presumed that 'Quiz' is a pseudonym for Coombe. It hardly matters - see a random snippet of the lacklustre verse below - as it was Rowlandson's comical illustrations that attracted the public and for which any of the books produced by this partnership are remembered.

'The Grand Master; or, Adventures of Qui Hi? in Hindostan. A Hudibrastic* poem in eight cantos by Quiz. Illustrated with engravings by Rowlandson' was released in 1816. I'm not overly sure I picked up the plot elements, such as they are, but Rowlandson's satirical blade cuts much more sharply upon the British colonial mindset in India than in any of the simplistic caricatures of the local inhabitants.

'The Grand Master' is online at Posner Library in a page-by-page arrangement.

All of the large versions of the images above were reduced in size somewhat (but are still very large), as Posner's huge jpeg files lose some of their quality as full enlargements.

• The balance of the illustrations in the book have been uploaded to this Webshots album.
• There is a full text biography of Rowlandson by Art Young (1938) available from the Internet Archive. (I've only read a very small amount.)
• 'The Pursuits of Pleasure Thomas Rowlandson's satirical view of Georgian society' by Robert Hughes (1990).
• These previous comical histories may also be of interest - Rome/England.

San's ceremonie now our griffin,
Sat down and made an Indidan tiffin;
Billiards and brandy, beer and hock,
Employs his time till six o'clock;
When he endeavours to find out
Fort William, by the shortest rout.
What various figures now he meets,
Crowding by thousands in the street!
To his astonish'd sight appears
Soldiers, Civilians, and Fakeers.
It happen'd that he chanc'd to stroll,
Near the identical black hole,
Where long ago, by tyrants fated,
Some Englishmen were sorely sweated:
Upon a tablet he might read
The story of that horrid deed:
But while this tale employ'd his thought,
He saw the idol Jaggernaut
Approach, amdist a num'rous croud
Of Zealots, praising him aloud;
The idol, mounted on a car,
Bore all the savage marks of war;
No mercy e'er his bosom feels,
For victims crush'd beneath his wheels
Our hero wish'd with all his soul,
He had him in the old black hole.--