Thomas Rowlandson’s Lower Orders
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Although Thomas Rowlandson was born as the son of a wool and silk merchant in Old Jewry in the City of London who went bankrupt when Thomas was just two years old, he had the unexpected good luck to inherit a fortune of £7,000 from a French aunt. Yet due to a profligate nature, Thomas’ inheritance got quickly squandered and he turned to caricature as a means of income, achieving memorable success. A series of life experiences which may permit us to surmise that Rowlandson’s use of the term Lower Orders, in the title of his Characteristic Sketches of the Lower Orders (a set of fifty prints published in 1820), was not entirely without irony.
While many sets of Cries of London over the centuries presented a harmonious social picture in which hawkers knew their place, I treasure Rowlandson’s work for the exuberant anarchy that he brings to his subjects who stride energetically through the London streets like they own them, gleefully lacking any sign of subservience. Rude, rambunctious, horny and venal as rats, these are Londoners that we can all recognise and, even though Rowlandson’s vision is not a flattering view of humanity, his lack of sentimentality endears us to his subjects in spite of their flawed natures.
In Rowlandson’s work, the drama of the city is all-consuming as everyone strives for gratification, whether making a living, seeking sexual pleasure, or simply to assert their being. These people appear childlike in their preoccupations, because nobody has time for self-conscious reflection when everyone is too busy pursuing life.
In the Newspaper Seller and the Cab Driver, the “lower orders” are placed in relation to their “superiors” and, in each case, the tension of the relationship is obvious. The Paper Sellers’ trumpet and loud cries are irking their customers by awakening them in the early morning, while the Cabbie is affronted by his meagre tip and challenges his passengers. And neither shows any regard for those who are offended by their lack of manners.
By contrast, in the plates of the Postman and the Rose Seller, the tension is erotic – the Postman checks out his young female customer while a voyeur cranes from a balcony above and the Rose Seller assumes a faux innocence when an old lecher chucks her under the chin – in each instance proposing transactions both covert and overt. Then there are the clownish Cat & Dogs’ Meat Seller, beset by hungry dogs, and the senile Night Watchman, oblivious of burglars. Only two hawkers demonstrate humility, the Knife Grinder preoccupied with his work and the Curds & Whey Seller sitting to watch the happy young mother and her children with tacit envy. Finally, the China Sellers and the Tinker mending pots and kettles are grotesques. The China Sellers ingratiate themselves in a predatory manner, but the Tinker meets his match in the demanding old hag.
There are some appealingly scruffy spontaneous lines are familiar to us in the drawings of Quentin Blake. By his early sixties, Rowlandson had sacrificed the precise elegant flowing lines of his early career for these off-the-cuff sketches which communicate character with great immediacy.
Ultimately, the central ambiguity and source of drama in Rowlandson’s Characteristic Sketches of the Lower Orders is the question – Who is playing who? It is apparent that there is no simple answer. Instead, Rowlandson presents a series of precise scenarios that trace delicate lines of social and economic distinction with wit and humanity, avoiding any didactic or moral conclusion. Above all, these wonderful prints illustrate that moral worth does not equate with the “Lower” or “Higher” orders, and their relative economic worth. Thomas Rowlandson’s Londoners are just as good and as bad each other.
Wot d’yer call that?
Cats and Dogs’ Meat?
Letters for Post?
Past one o’clock and a fine morning!
Buy my Sweet Roses?
Knives and Scissors to Grind?
Curds and Whey?
Any Earthenware? Buy a Jug or a Teapot?
Pots and Kettles to Mend?
You may also like to take a look at
Marcellus Laroon’s Cries of London
More John Player’s Cries of London
William Nicholson’s London Types
Francis Wheatley’s Cries of London
The lower orders rock!
Greetings from Boston,
GA, I always enjoy seeing the Rowlandson’s sketches along with those of his contemporaries George Cruikshank and James Gillray. I guess the latter two tended more towards political satire.
Well said – “Rude, rambunctious, horny and venal as rats, these are Londoners that we can all recognise and, even though Rowlandson’s vision is not a flattering view of humanity, his lack of sentimentality endears us to his subjects in spite of their flawed natures.”
Human nature doesn’t change…
You know I first found you when I researching information on my Great Grandmother who was and orphan then a British Home Child. (Yes I found out all the information I sought. Turns out her mother died in Childbirth in 1887 when Annie was three and her father kept the two older children who could work but what does a man do with a 3 year old daughter. Hence Annie MacPherson.) Anyway since then you have taught me so much about the London of yore or lore which ever. Thank you for enriching my mind and life.