A Spanish Pass-Port to France!!
Medium
Hand-colored etching
Dimensions
Sheet: 10 1/2 × 13 15/16 in. (26.6 × 35.4 cm) Plate: 10 1/8 × 13 9/16 in. (25.7 × 34.5 cm)
Classification
Prints
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1959
Accession Number
59.533.1176
Tags
Art Historical Context
In the turbulent era of the Napoleonic Wars, this hand-colored etching, *A Spanish Pass-Port to!!*, captures British wit at its sharpest. Published on September 12, 8, by Rudolph Ackermann in London, features designs by George Murgatro Woodward and Thomas Rowlandson—a master caricaturist famed for his exaggerated, humorous figures. The title mocks Joseph Bonaparte, Napoleon's brother and the imposed King of Spain, amid the Peninsular War's chaos. As Spanish resistance flared against French occupation, the print satirizes political upheaval, likely portraying Bonaparte's precarious rule or a ha...