(AMERICAN REVOLUTION 1776) Darly [Matthew and Mary]; artist

Sale 2391 - Lot 34

Price Realized: $ 5,500

?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price

Estimate: $ 1,500 - $ 2,500

(AMERICAN REVOLUTION--1776.) Darly, [Matthew and Mary]; artists. Bunkers Hill, or America's Head Dress. Hand-colored engraving, 9 1/2 x 6 3/4 inches; cropped along the border, creased, moderate soiling, pencil marks on first letters of title, skillfully conserved and laid down on heavy paper, mounted along top edge to mat. [London], 19 April [1776]

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Additional Details

A British satirical print, depicting a comical battle taking place in the folds of a woman's fashionably enormous hair. The troops fight under the flags of a monkey and a duck, while a naval battle rages in her lower tresses. Matthew Darly was a popular London print-seller, while his wife Mary apparently did much of the engraving. The print was possibly taken from the 1776 book "Darly's Comic-Prints of Characters, Caricatures, Macaronies, etc." "Of inestimable interest and, so far as the writer knows, no copy has come to light in this country"--P. Lee Phillips, "A Rare Caricature of Bunker Hill," Daughters of the American Revolution Magazine 52:7 (July 1918), page 391-4. Cresswell 697; Dolmetsch, Rebellion and Reconciliation 37. We know of no copies at auction.