Acute Pain (Le Brun Travested, or Caricatures of the Passions)
Medium
Etching, printed in brown ink, hand-colored
Dimensions
sheet: 11 3/8 x 8 7/8 in. (28.9 x 22.6 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
59.533.702
Tags
Art Historical Context
In the whimsical world of early 19th-century British satire, *Acute Pain (Le Brunested, or Caric of the Passions)* a hilariously exaggerated moment of male agony. Created by artist Thomas Rowlandson, designer George Murgatroyd, and published by Rudolph Ackermann in London on January 21 1800, this spoofs the serious facial expression studies of 17th-century French painter Charles Le Brun. Le Brun's precise anatomical drawings of human passions, like pain, were influential in art academies, but here they're travestied into grotesque comedy, poking fun at overly dramatic suffering. Rowlandson, a...