THOMAS ROWLANDSON
148 Box-Lobby Loungers
Pen and black and gray ink, gray and red wash, and
graphite; H: 37.5 cm (i4^3 /4in.); W: 56.1 cm (22 Vs in.)
84.00.645MARKS AND INSCRIPTIONS: At bottom center, collec-
tion mark of fourth earl of Warwick (L. 2600).
PROVENANCE: George Guy, fourth earl of Warwick,
Warwick Castle (sale, Christie's, London, May 21, 1896,
lot 336); Earl of Carnarvon, London; Captain Desmond
Coke, London (sale, Christie's, London, November 22,
1929, lot 60); sale, Sotheby's, London, December 19,
1945, lot 70; Major Leonard Dent, Hillfields, Burghfield
(sale, Christie's, London, July 10, 1984, lot 16); art mar-
ket, Boston.
EXHIBITIONS: Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1785
(as The Back of the Boxes at the Theatre, Covent Garden). A
Loan Exhibition of Important Drawings by Thomas Row-
landson, Ellis and Smith, London, 1948, no. 15.
Rowlandson—Drawings from Town and Country, Reading
Museum and Art Gallery, 1962, no. 65.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: J. Grego, Rowlandson the Caricaturist
(London, 1880), vol. i, pp. 180-182; B. Long, "Row-
landson Drawings in the Desmond Coke Collection,"
Connoisseur 79 (December 1927), pp. 208-209; D. F. T.
Coke, Confessions of an Incurable Collector (London,
1928), pp. 126, 138-141; A. P. Oppe, "Rowlandson the
Surprising," Studio 124, no. 596 (November 1942), pp.
149 , 154; F. G. Roe, Rowlandson: The Life and Art of 'a Brit-
ish Genius (Leigh-on-Sea, 1947), pp. 25, 32; "Rowland-
son's Record of London Life," Illustrated London News
(May 15, 1948), p. 558; A. Bury, Rowlandson Drawings
(New York, 1949), p. 8; B. Falk, Rowlandson: His Life and
Art (New York, 1949), pp. 81, 135, 141, 191; P. Davis,
"Rowly at Reading," Illustrated London News (April 21,
1962), p. 626; W. Gaunt, "Reading Shows the Best of
Rowlandson," Times (London), April 13, 1962, p. i8;M.
Hardie, Water-colour Painting in Britain (London, 1966),
vol. i, p. 219; J. Hayes, Rowlandson Water colors and Draw-
ings (London, 1972), pp. 44, no. 29; 93; J. C. Riely, Row-
landson Drawings from the Paul Mellon Collection, exh. cat.,Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, and Royal
Academy of Arts, London, 1978, pp. xi, 7, n. 4; F. Da-
vies, "No Mere Buffoon," Country Life (September 27,
1984), p. 838.THIS LARGE DRAWING WAS ETCHED BY ROWLANDSON
and published by his friend John Raphael Smith on Jan-
uary 5, 1786. The inscription on the print, Design by H.
Wigstead / Etch'd by T. Rowlandson, has prompted consid-
erable speculation about the degree of the magistrate
Wigstead's contribution to the design. Despite the in-
scription, however, there is every reason to attribute all
but perhaps the choice of theme to Rowlandson. The
scene shows various people in a theater lobby and cari-
catures their diverse personalities and the interplay be-
tween them. The principal figure of the tall gentleman
near the center is identifiable as Colonel George Hanger,
a friend of the Prince of Wales.^1 He is shown assessing
two pretty young girls, while a trio of older and less sa-
vory characters at the left whisper to each other and the
gentleman pays the corpulent woman for an unspecified
reason. To the right, other young women are studied,
while a short man mistakenly approaches an apparently
annoyed middle-aged lady. The overtones suggested in
the drawing are made more concrete by the playbill on
the wall in the etching advertising "The Way of the
World" and "Who's the Dupe?" The rich variety of char-
acters, the humorous and biting rendering of human foi-
ble, and the entirely appropriate sharp linearity are all
characteristic of Rowlandson at the height of his powers.i. A. B. Waller and J. L. Connelly, "Thomas Rowlandson and
the London Theatre," Apollo 86 (August 1967), p. 134.328 BRITISH SCHOOL • ROWLANDSON