on a piece of equipment mounted on top of...

An unidentified woman wearing a coat and hat stands next to a tall tree stump in front of a large, unidentified, mountain resort in Colorado. A small rock wall lines a dirt road in the foreground. Thin trees with bare branches stand near the road....

Two unidentified women sit on a bench in the covered entryway to an unidentified, mountain resort in Colorado. The women both wear coats and hats. Shrubs with bare branches line the front of the resort. A brick walkway leads to the front entrance.

Photograph of an unidentified girl measuring the hem of a dress of another a girl from South High School in Denver, Colorado. One girls stands on a chair while another holds a measuring stickyears of his death – inspired the likes of Goya and David and continues to influence satirical cartoonists all over the world.

Then, as now, there were rich pickings for ridicule. In Parliament, Tory William Pitt the Younger battled for supremacy with Charles James Fox, Edmund Burke and Richard Sheridan for the Whigs. In the palace, George III’s madness was public knowledge as were George IV’s various affairs, extravagant lifestyle and political meddling.

Domestic issues such as Catholic Emancipation and political reform weighed heavily – and all in the shadow of the French Revolution.

Techniques

The brilliance of the genre was its ability to quickly crystallise topical events or ideas in the language of the street as well as the drawing room. The core technique was copper plate etching, a fast, fluid