Filial Affection, or a Trip to Gretna Green
Thomas Rowlandson|John Raphael Smith
December 15, 1785 · Hand-colored etching with aquatint · Drawings and Prints
An eloping couple is carried north towards Scotland in a fast post-carriage or chaise, pursued by the woman's angry father and a posse of riders. A signpost at right points "To Gretna Green". The father urges his horse forward and holds a whip, as the man and woman lean out of the coach windows and brandish pistols. A new restrictive marriage law, passed in England in 1754, encouraged couples to elope to Scotland. At Gretna Green, the first village over the Scottish border, they could marry under a medieval practice that required them only to make a statement of their intenstions before a witness.
- Artist
- Thomas Rowlandson|John Raphael Smith
- Date
- December 15, 1785
- Medium
- Hand-colored etching with aquatint
- Department
- Drawings and Prints
- Credit line
- The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1959
