Thomas Rowlandson (1775-1827)
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Thomas Rowlandson (1775-1827)

The Happy Family or The Married Man

Details
Thomas Rowlandson (1775-1827)
The Happy Family or The Married Man
pencil, pen and ink, fragmentary watermark, Strasborg Lily
9¾ x 12 in. (24.7 x 30.5 cm.)
Provenance
with Ferrers, Piccadilly Arcade, London.
The Wauchope Family.
Sir David Ross, K.B.E.(+); Christie's, London, 4 March 1975, lot 66.
with Spink-Leger, London.
Literature
Dr. John Hayes, Rowlandson, His Watercolours and Drawings, 1972, no. 56, p. 120, illustrated.
J. Steel (ed.), Mr Rowlandson's England, London, 1985, p. 33, illustrated.
Exhibited
London, Leger Galleries, 8 December 1975-16 January 1976, no. 1.
Engraved
T. Rowlandson, 1786 as 'The Married Man'.
Special notice
Christie's Interest in Property Consigned for Auction. From time to time, Christie's may offer a lot which it owns in whole or in part. This is such lot. No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT at 17.5% will be added to the buyer's premium which is invoiced on a VAT inclusive basis

Lot Essay

In this scene of domestic concord, the embrace of father and child echoes that of the mythical figures in the painting behind them. There is an air of serenity unusual for Rowlandson and, as John Hayes (loc. cit.) writes, the artist 'has kept his penwork to the minimum and allowed the colour, pale but sympathetic to the mood of the subject-matter, to sing out in broad, clean washes.'

The painting was engraved by Rowlandson in 1786 as 'The Married Man' and accompanied by a pair of lilting couplets:
'When Hymen joins the Lover and the Fair
Love spreads his guardian pinions o'er the pair;
The smiles of Sweet Contentment cheer his dome,
And all the Pleasures make his house their Home.'

The engraving probably relates to a coloured plate book of the 'Poems of Peter Pindar' that Rowlandson was working on at this time and which was published in quarto between 1786 and 1792 by G. Kearsley. Peter Pindar was the comic pseudonym of John Walcot (1738-1819), a satirist with a farcical sense of humour who was also intimately bound up with the world of art. His first major work was Lyric Odes to the Royal Academicians which includes some fine art criticism. The couplets above may well be by Walcot, evoking happiness which is tinged with satire to accompany Rowlandson's depiction of harmony which surely itself has a hint of caricature.

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