Shave for a Penny

 

Richard Newton

  1777 - 1798 (biography)

c. 1794  

watercolor and ink 

6 3/8 x 9 1/8" image and paper 

initialled "R d N" in lower right 

1 of 1 unique 

 

 

cream wove, remargined with a buff wove 

 

 

18871 

SOLD

A rare watercolor by English caricaturist Richard Newton (1777 - 1798) who died at age 21 of "Prison Fever" a term at the time for Typhoid fever, rampant in 18th century prisons. He began working as a satirical artist for the publisher William Holland at age 14. In this watercolor a barber cuts his client with a razor, distracted by a man waiting to collect the hair in order to make the wigs that were so essential for formal dress during the reign of George III, a frequent subject of ridicule by the young Newton. The 2 clients have been shaved bald. Newton did his first barbershop etching in 1971 when he was 14. This image has similaritites to Newton's etching of 1794, titled "A Country Barber's Shop" about which David Alexander, in his book "Richard Newton and English Caricature in the 1790's" wrote: Newton returned to the subject of the barber's shop, which he had shown in one of his first prints, this time giving it a country setting. Whether, as a Londoner, he had seen many country barbers is unlikely.....Newton did another print of heads seen in a barber's shop under the title "Sketches in a Shaving Shop," December 16, 1794.