Isaac Robert Cruikshank

British, b.1789, d.1856

Preparing The Witnesses - A View In Cotton Garden

  • 1820
  • Etching
  • Sir Joseph Kinsey bequest
  • 204 x 356mm
  • 74/25

Satirist Robert Cruikshank reflects the racial prejudices and attitudes of his times in this brutal caricature of Italian witnesses being scrubbed up, effectively coached, for trial by the prime minister, home secretary and foreign secretary. They are being prepared for trial in London, in an attempt to expedite George IV’s divorce from Queen Caroline by providing evidence that she was unfaithful during her exile in Italy.

Item 13824 in 'Catalogue of political and personal satires preserved in the department of prints and drawings in the British Museum', volume X, 1820-1827, by M. Dorothy George (British Museum, 1952)

Published by Thomas Dolby, 132 Strand, August 1820.

Exhibition History