Tom Jones Assisting Molly Seagrim in the Churchyard

Philippe Jacques de Loutherbourg

1775 · Pen and brown ink, brush and brown wash, over black chalk underdrawing · Drawings and Prints

After a successful early career in Paris, Loutherbourg relocated to London, where his style evolved to adapt to the new milieu. During this English period he produced more literary-inspired works, including this illustration of a comic and grisly scene from Henry Fielding's Tom Jones (1749), wherein Tom and the pregnant Molly Seagrim fend off attackers using bones and other objects readily at hand in the Gothic courtyard.

Artist

Philippe Jacques de Loutherbourg

Date

1775

Medium

Pen and brown ink, brush and brown wash, over black chalk underdrawing

Department

Drawings and Prints

Credit line

Gift of Joseph Baillio, in honor of Philippe de Montebello, 2008