The Triumph of Hypocrisy

Art Historical Context

Step into the witty world of 18th-century British satire with *The Triumph of Hyp*, a hand-colored stippled etching andatint created in 1787 by Elizabeth Jackson, Thomas Rowlandson and Samuel Collings. collaborative print, measuring 12½ × 16⅛ inches, captures a lively interior scene featuring men, women, and—hallmarks of Rowlandson's caricatured style, known for skewering societal follies during the Georgian era. Housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Drawings and Prints department, it exemplifies the era's booming print culture, where affordable colored etchings brought sharp social commentary to the masses. The stipple technique, with its dotted lines for subtle shading, combined with aquatint's velvety tones, allowed for painterly effects ideal for satirical detail. Hand-coloring added vibrant life, heightening the humor and irony of hypocrisy's "triumph"—likely a jab at moral pretensions in domestic or fashionable settings. Rowlandson and Collings, masters of caricature, thrived amid political and social upheavals like the Regency scandals, using such prints to mock vanity and duplicity. This gem from The Elisha Whittelsey Collection invites us to chuckle at timeless human foibles, reminding visitors how art once served as society's mirror—and mirror-ball.

About the Artist

Elizabeth Jackson|Thomas Rowlandson|Samuel Collings (British|British) · 1785 |1757 –1787 |1827

British, active 1785–87|British, London 1757–1827 London