Thomas Rowlandson

(London 1756-1827)

Tea on shore

Footnotes

Provenance
The Collection of Joseph Grego
Private Collection, UK, circa 1950 to 1998
Sale, Christie's, London, 26 November 1998, lot 59
With Spink-Leger, London, where purchased by the present owner in 1999


Exhibited
London, Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colour, The English humorists in art, 1889, no.107
London, Lowell Libson Ltd, Beauty and the Beast: A loan exhibition of Rowlandson's works from British private collections, 2007, no.2

Literature
J. Grego, Rowlandson the Caricaturist, London, 1880, pp. 168, 253-256, 323
Royal Institute of Painter's in Water colour, The English humorists in art, exh. cat., London, 1889, p.15, repr. P.30
L. Libson, H. Belsey, J. Basket, et al, Beauty and the Beast: A loan exhibition of Rowlandson's works from British private collections, London, 2007, pp. 26-7

Published
J. Harris, as Tea on Shore, January 1789 and subsequently reissued with some alterations by S.W.Fores in 1794

Tea on Shore was intended as a pendant to Grog on Board, the two being published as prints by Fores in 1794. In the two drawings Rowlandson explores the contrasting courtship rituals of low and high life, although his eye for social satire treats all equally. Grog on Board shows a young beauty being entertained below deck by well-lubricated sailors, while Tea on Shore is the officers' more genteel counterpart, a tea urn replacing the brandy casks of the first scene.

While in terms of output Rowlandson was more productive in his later years, turning out huge numbers of drawings with great facility, he is widely regarded as having produced his best work in the 1780s, the decade in which the present drawing was made.