The dance of death: the careless and the careful. Coloured aquatint after T. Rowlandson, 1816.

1816

1 print : aquatint, with watercolour ; image 11.9 x 21.4 cm

The careful and the careless led to join the living and the dead.

In 1814 the humorous artist Thomas Rowlandson started to create a distinctive "English Dance of death": Rowlandson produced watercolours of contemporary scenes showing death, and William Combe (a writer) wrote verses describing the scenes. In addition to Combe's verses, each aquatint is accompanied by a couplet in English verse by an unidentified author, and the aquatints were coloured in watercolour by unkown hands. The combined pictures and texts were published by Rudolph Ackermann from his shop in the Strand, London, at a rate of three prints a month from 1 April 1814 to 1 March 1816

R.R. Wark, Rowlandson's drawings for the English dance of death, San Marino, California 1966, pp. 3-27

J.R. Abbey, Life in England in aquatint and lithography 1770-1860, San Francisco 1991, no. 263.

Wellcome Collection 32646i