A Bravura Air. James Gillray (1756-1815)

Etching, with colour by a contemporary hand, published by Hannah Humphrey, the design, satirizing Mrs. Billington, by James Gillray.

Within a hand made replica of a period print frame.

o.s: 16 3/4 in x 12 5/8 in

The singer caused a sensation when returning to the London stage in 1801, the year this print was published. Her first performance at Covent Garden was in the part of Mandane in the opera Artaxerxes, and is satirized here due to her ‘inelegant attitude of pressing her hands against her bosom in passages that require exertion. It never fails to communicate ides of labour, struggle and pain’. (Secrert History of the Green Room. ii.75)

The publisher, known as Mrs Humphrey, was never married. She was the sister of William Humphrey from whose address in St Martin’s Lane she published her first prints. She was recognized as a publisher of expensive satirical prints, especially by Gillray, who worked for her exclusively from 1791, and who lived in her house for the last twenty years of his life.