Bizarre
  1. Lepic, Ce qui Restait du Puissant Guillaume de Naillac
  2. Claeaz, Dancers with Death
  3. Anonymous American, A Naked Man and Horse
  4. Klinger, Amor, Tod und Jenseits (Love, Death and the Hereafter)
  5. Surugue, La Folie pare la Décrépitude
  6. Legros, La Légende du Bonhomme Misère : La Mort dans le Poirier
  7. Rops, L’Enlèvement
  8. Sadeler, Allegory of Opulence, Fornication and Stupidity
  9. Mohlitz, La Vierge aux Étrons (The Virgin of Turds)
  10. Legrand, Épaves de Famille (Oddballs of the Family)
  11. Jacquemart, L’Écurueil (sic)
  12. Benassit, L’Absinthe!
  13. de Bry, Punishment of the Mutinous Indians
  14. Goncourt, Le Singe au Miroir (The Monkey at the Mirror)
  15. Callot, Les Martyrs du Japon
  16. Dillon, Les Mendiants (The Beggars)
  17. Barberis, The Witch
  18. Budzinski, The Thirsty Giant
  19. Meryon, Le Ministère de la Marine
  20. Torre-Bueno, Death’s Arrival
  21. van Meurs, Animals of America
  22. Redon, Félinerie
  23. Chagall, Le Vixe
  24. Martin, Indécision (Tête de Femme)
  25. Rops, Le Calvaire
  26. Rops, Les Frères de la Bonne Trogne
  27. Gillray, Tentanda via est qua ve quoque possim Tollere humo
  28. Underwood, Simian Ecstasy
  29. Veber, Beheaded!
  30. Strang, Death and the Ploughman’s Wife: Frontispiece
  31. Corman, The Temptation of Saint Anthony
  32. Bliss, Gargoyles Spouting
  33. Castellón, Of Land and Sea
  34. Eichenberg, Isaiah 11
  35. Rops, L’Idole (The Idol)
  36. Master MZ, Aristotle and Phyllis
  37. Bracquemond, “Hors de mon soleil, canailles!"
  38. Spare, Nemesis
  39. Higgens, Forgotten
  40. Anonymous, Jewish Amulet to Protect Mother and Child
  41. Daumier, Une Expérience Qui Réussit Trop Bien
  42. Seligmann, Le Roi du Charbon (King Charcoal)
  43. Braun, The Release of Force
  44. Callot, Le Grand Rocher
  45. Forest, Bâstard Foetus Hérédité, Comte D’Averton Mort-Né
  46. Jacque, La Souricière
  47. Veber, “Ah! Qu’il fait chaud"
  48. Pastelot, Les Sorcières
  49. Lepic, Le Verger du Roi Louis (The Orchard of King Louis)
  50. Grandville, Résurrection de la Censure
  51. Tidemann, The Earth Swallows Up the People of Korah
  52. Shields, The Descent
  53. Redon, C’est le diable
  54. Sadeler, Ita Erit et Aventus Filii Hominis

27. James Gillray
( 1757-1815)
Tentanda via est qua ve quoque possim Tollere humo

(click on image to print)
Gillray, Tentanda via est qua ve quoque possim Tollere humo

Tentanda via est qua ve quoque possim Tollere humo

Etching with hand coloring, 1810, 510 x 386 mm., British Museum Satires 11570. Fine impression with good period coloring on wove paper with small margins at the sides, trimmed on the platemark top and bottom; the paper lightly toned, tears repaired and creases flattened and some small edge losses in the margins. The overall appearance is quite good. The fantastic image shows William Wyndham, 1st Baron Grenville, wearing a papal crown and riding in a balloon through Oxford, the scene loaded with Catholic symbols, the streets crowded with adherents, scoffers and others quite oblivious to the scene. The occasion was the installation of Lord Grenville as Chancellor of Oxford University. Grenville had been, and continued to be, a proponent of Catholic Emancipation in Britain, something not fully accomplished until 1829, and still, in 1810, a subject of much angry dispute. The Latin title is from Virgil’s Georgics and is translated as “I too must attempt a way by which I may raise myself above the ground.” A quotation from Milton’s Paradise Lost also appears: “He steers his flight aloft, incumbent on the dusky air that felt unusual weight.” The image is rife with references and satiric portraits and an extensive description of it all is available on the website of the British Museum. The print is rare. Only two impressions of it have been at public sale in twenty years (this is apparently one of the two).