A Snug Birth in a Shower

William Heath ('Paul Pry')

1828 · Hand-colored etching · Drawings and Prints

This fashion satire proposes a practical application for the huge broad-brimmed hats fashionable in London in the late 1820s, showing a woman wearing a green dress using her hat to protect two dandies from the rain. Both have exaggerated hair and whiskers, and carry furled umbrellas but note that they find the present arrangement much more to their liking. Like many of Heath's prints from this period, it is signed with a small top-hatted dandy holding an umbrella–Paul Pry, a nosy character from a play.

Artist

William Heath ('Paul Pry')

Date

1828

Medium

Hand-colored etching

Department

Drawings and Prints

Credit line

Gift of Jill Spalding, 2022