39cm (15.5in) x 33.5cm (13.2in)
Hand-coloured etching and aquatint by James Gillray after Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Braddyll, Coldstream Guards. Depicting a satirical image of King George III, as Gulliver from Jonathan Swift's novel 'Gulliver's Travels’, half-length in profile left, with tied wig, red coat decorated with the Garter sash and star, holding a telescope to his eye as he holds a miniature figure of Napoleon in his right hand, as the character Grilding, whom he addresses, viz - “My little Tnd Grildrig you have made a most admirable panegyric upon yourself and Country but from what I can gather from your own relation & the answers I have with much pains wring’d & extorted from you, I cannot but conclude you to the one the most pernicious little odious reptiles that nature ever suffer’d to crawl upon the surface of the earth.” Published 1 July 1803 by Hannah Humphrey,. Visible paper size 31cm (12in) x 25cm (10in).
Read more
Hannah Humphrey was one of a handful of successful women print sellers operating in Regency London. Between 1797 and 1817 she ran her business from premises at 27 St James's Street, the shop being depicted in the print ‘Very Slippy-Weather’. James Gillray lodged with her for much of his working life, and she looked after him after his lapse into insanity around 1810 until his death in 1815. She was known as Mrs Humphrey although she remained a spinster for all her life.
Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas Richmond Gale Braddyll (1776-1862) was the son of Wilson Gale Braddyll and was commissioned into the Coldstream Guards. As a young amateur artist he supplied designs for satirical prints to James Gillray (1756–1815), Georgian Britain’s funniest, most inventive, and most celebrated graphic satirist. In 1818, Bradyll inherited the family seat, Conishead Priory, Lancashire, and had it rebuilt by Philip Wyatt at a cost of £140,000. The remainder of his fortune was lost to speculation in Durham coal mines and in 1848 he was declared bankrupt.