JS[ayers] f.
Pubd by Jas Bretherton, 31st. March 1788 [but a later impression?].
Soft-ground etching on wove paper, 175 x 110mm. 7 x 4¼".
Caricature of Sir Brook Watson, 1st Bt (1735 - 1807), standing in profile to the right, bending forward, his wooden leg concealed behind a bench (left). He holds out a document with a pendent seal inscribed 'Pension for Services'. From the bench, on which is his hat, hangs an inscribed paper. Orphaned as a child in 1741, Watson initially went to sea but lost his leg to a shark in Havana. He then served in the army as a commissary and was a member of the original committee of Lloyds in 1772, later serving for ten years as its chairman. He was also MP for the City of London from 1784 to 1793 and became Lord Mayor of London in 1796. The pension was £500 a year, granted to his wife. By James Sayers (1748 - 1823). Sayers's caricatures were so powerful and direct in their purpose that Fox is said to have declared that they did him more harm than all the attacks made on him in parliament or the press. Sayers's hostility to Alderman Brook was perhaps evoked by his opposition to the Shop Tax, 13 March 1788. The publisher Charles Bretherton (c.1760 fl - 1783) was the younger brother of James Bretherton.
BM Satires 7290. NPG D8787.
[Ref: 21359]  £120.00