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 painton on the wall entitled "After" showing cupid with the spent rocket falling to earth.

Published in the 1822 Heath edition of Hogarth's works (placed loose inside a concealed folder in the back board of the work).

Some spotting and waterstains mainly to margins.