<< YCBA Home Yale Center for British Art Yale Center for British Art << YCBA Home

YCBA Collections Search

 
IIIF Actions
Creator:
Thomas Rowlandson, 1756–1827
Title:
A Sporting Cove
Date:
between 1815 and 1820
Materials & Techniques:
Watercolor with pen and brown ink over graphite; verso: watercolor blots on medium, moderately textured, cream wove paper
Dimensions:
Sheet: 7 3/4 x 6 inches (19.7 x 15.2 cm)
Credit Line:
Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
Copyright Status:
Public Domain
Accession Number:
B1977.14.368
Classification:
Drawings & Watercolors
Collection:
Prints and Drawings
Subject Terms:
black | genre subject | gray (color) | jacket | man | scarf (costume accessory) | top hat | white (color)
Access:
Accessible by appointment in the Study Room [Request]
Note: The Study Room is open by appointment. Please visit the Study Room page on our website for more details.
Link:
https://collections.britishart.yale.edu/catalog/tms:5756
Export:
XML
IIIF Manifest:
JSON

This drawing is one of Rowlandson’s occasional forays into portraiture, although whether it portrays an actual sitter or a caricature type is debatable. While he sports a fashionable top hat and coat, the cove’s face is battered and distorted into a vision of ugliness, his hat is worn at a disreputable angle, and a leer plays upon his lips. Rowlandson invites the viewer to see him as an aging and disreputable dandy. The cove’s physical ugliness is equated to moral degeneracy, a commonplace in an age that paid serious regard to physiognomy, the “science” that taught one to determine a person’s character from facial features.

Gallery label for Great British Watercolors from the Paul Mellon Collection at the Yale Center for British Art (Yale Center for British Art, 2008-06-09 - 2008-08-17)
While caricatures of social groups such as this were a staple part of Rowlandson's oeuvre, he was also an extremely accomplished portraitist, a facet of his work that is underrated today. A Sporting Cove is one of Rowlandson's intermittent forays into portraiture, although whether the subject is an actual sitter, an individual caricature, or merely an imagi nary "type" is debatable. Although this particular "cove" sports a fashionable top hat and coat, his face is battered and distorted into a vision of ugliness, the hat is worn at a disreputable angle, and a shifty leer plays upon his lips. Clearly, Rowlandson invites the viewer to see him as an aged and disreputable dandy of the sort that populate his other drawings, such as The Gaming Table of 1801 (fig. 5). Here the cove's physical ugliness is equated to moral degeneracy, a judgment that was commonplace in an age that paid serious regard to physiognomy, the "science" that taught how to determine a person's character from facial features alone. In the early 1790s, Rowlandson had copied some of the expressive heads published by the French court portraitist Joseph Ducreux (1735-1802), who visited London in 1791. Ducreux was a committed physiognomist and heavily influenced by the ideas of Johann Caspar Lavater, the author of the period's most important publication on physiognomy: Physiognomische Fragmente of 1775-78, which was available in English from 1789 as Essays on Physiognomy in an edition that boasted 800 engraved illustrations. Lavater hoped to persuade his readers that physiognomy was a serious branch of natural philosophy and to provide them with a surefire means of judging a person's character. Influenced by these ideas, Rowlandson worked on his own publications of physiognomy and comparative anatomy towards the end of his life. That Rowlandson gave credence to such pseudoscience is one of the less comic aspects of his art, and this study of an ageing cove can be related to these interests. However, his handling of watercolor in this work is extremely high-spirited. When blended with the wiry pen line, the apparently carefree application of pink tints to the face creates the convincing impression of a craggy visage. The cove's hat and coat are both given solidity by using nothing more than two separate shades of gray. Whatever Rowlandson's judgments about the cove's inner life might have been, he has portrayed his outer features with the minimum of means necessary to create a portrait of extraordinary vitality.

Matthew Hargraves

Hargraves, Matthew, and Scott Wilcox. Great British Watercolors: from the Paul Mellon collection. New Haven: Yale Center for British Art, 2007, p. 67, no. 28

Great British Watercolors from the Paul Mellon Collection at the Yale Center for British Art (Yale Center for British Art, 2008-06-09 - 2008-08-17) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition] [Exhibition Description]

Great British Watercolors from the Paul Mellon Collection at the Yale Center for British Art (The State Hermitage Museum, 2007-10-23 - 2008-01-13) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition] [Exhibition Description]

Great British Watercolors from the Paul Mellon Collection at the Yale Center for British Art (Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, 2007-07-11 - 2007-09-30) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition] [Exhibition Description]

Rowlandson Drawings from the Paul Mellon Collection (Royal Academy of Arts, 1978-03-04 - 1978-05-28) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

Rowlandson Drawings from the Paul Mellon Collection (Yale Center for British Art, 1977-11-16 - 1978-01-15) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

John Baskett, The drawings of Thomas Rowlandson in the Paul Mellon Collection, Brandywine Press, New York, 1978, p. 37, no. 125, NJ18 .R79 B38 (LC) Oversize (YCBA) [YCBA]

British Art at Yale, Apollo, v.105, April 1977, pp. 283-4, fig. 24, N1 .A54 + OVERSIZE (YCBA) [YCBA]

Robert Colls, This sporting life : sport and liberty in England, 1760-1960, Oxford University Press, Oxford, U.K., 2020, pp. 90, 371, 373, GV706.35 .C65 2020 (LC) YCBA [ORBIS]

Vic Gatrell, The first bohemians, life and art in London's golden age , Allen Lane, London, 2013, pp. 131-32, fig. 155, NX544.L6 G37 2013 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Patricia Phagan, Thomas Rowlandson, pleasures and pursuits in Georgian England , Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Poughkeepsie, N.Y. London, 2011, pp. 32,33, fig. 13, NJ18 R79 P53 2011 + OVERSIZE (YCBA) [YCBA]

John Riely, Rowlandson drawings from the Paul Mellon Collection, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, 1977, p. 87, no. 118, NJ18 .R79 R68 (LC) (YCBA) [YCBA]

The Cunning Eye of Thomas Rowlandson, Apollo, vol.105, no. 182, April 1977, pp. 283-4, fig. 24, N1 A54 05:2 + (YCBA) Also available: N5220 M552 A7 1977 + (YCBA) [YCBA]

Yale Center for British Art, Great British watercolors : from the Paul Mellon Collection, Yale University Press, New Haven, 2007, pp. 66-67, no. 28, ND1928 .Y35 2007 (LC)+ Oversize (YCBA) [YCBA]


If you have information about this object that may be of assistance please contact us.