#1792

From the Victoria & Albert Museum

Jean-Jacques Lequeu, Frontispiece to the New method applied to the elementary principles of drawing, tending to graphically prefect the outline of the human head by means of various geometrical figures (1792)

Angelika Kauffmann (Swiss, 1741-1807) Cupid and Psyche, Detail, 1792 Kunsthaus Zürich

"Gillray’s famously brutal caricature of George, Prince of Wales encapsulates the effects of uncontrolled self-indulgence upon the heir to the British throne. Sprawled in his chair after a lavish meal, the prince picks his teeth with a meat fork; his lack of gentility is underscored by the over-flowing chamber pot at his elbow used to anchor unpaid bills. Just thirty years old, his accumulated ailments can be inferred from remedies piled at right – pills and potions to treat "stinking breath", "piles" (hemorrhoids), venereal disease and poor digestion. A portrait on the wall suggests a more effective remedy – depicting Luigi Carnarro, a Venetian nobleman whose life was famously saved by going on a strict diet. By including "Voluptuary" in the title, Gillray invoked contemporary worries that traditional British masculine virtues were being enervated by a culture obsessed with luxury."

Margaret Ann Neave, lived at Saint Peter Port on the island of Guernsey in the English Channel. The first woman who lived through three centuries, born in 1792 and passing away at 110 years old in 1902.