Article: 011655

Country: United Kingdom

Manufacturer: Gabriel Shear (oder Shire) Tregear, 123 Cheapside, London. Tregear’s Black Jokes No. 7. The Card Party

Tregear’s Black Jokes No. 7. The Card Party. Design: William Summers (1816-1880?, drawing) and Charles Hunt (active 1825-1857, engraver). Hand-col. aquatint, 271x365 mm. Backs: Plain. 1834.
Sheet No. 7 from a series of 20 caricaturing blacks. Apart from the latent racism, these sheets go back to the British Slavery Abolition Act, specifically aimed at the British colonies in the Caribbean, promulgated in 1833 and enacted in 1834. Tregear specialized in caricatures and sporting subjects. In these series, „the African American characters are depicted with grotesque features and manners, wearing outlandish clothes, and speaking in patois and malapropisms to be portrayed as ineptly attempting to mimic white high society.“ (digital.librarycompany.org). And so the „black legs“ in the subtitle „They are certainly black legs“ refer to the crow birds, known for their cunning, here to be understood pejoratively as crookedness.
Faint soiling in the white margins, otherwise very good conservation.

$ 396.21