Humour

33x41 cm

PAIR OF PRINTS.

Imprint on each print:
Invented Engraved & Published Dec.^br y:^e 15:^th 1736. by W.^m Hogarth Pursuant to an act of Parliament. | Price two Shillings & 6pence. [incompletely erased]

Pair of bawdy prints engraved by William Hogarth in 1736 based on his second painted version of the subject.
The first plate:
Set in a bedroom, an older man is being resisted by a younger woman but the discarded corset suggests it to be only token resistance. A small dog barks excitedly while a falling dressing table reveals books on piety and love poems. A picture on the wall entitled "Before" shows cupid lighting a rocket. 
The second plate:
The woman is pleading for the man to stay as he is pulling up his breaches. The dog is asleep beside a book on the floor entitled Omne Animal Post Coitum Triste [Every animal is sad after sex]. The fallen dressing table reveals a second painting on the wall entitled "After" showing cupid with the spent rocket falling to earth.

Published in the 1822 Heath edition of Hogarth's works. Due to the controversial nature of the subject, the prints were issued loose in a secret pocket in the back board of the volume.

Some spotting and waterstains mainly to margins.