John Young after Thomas Stothard

The Benevolent Tar [&] Maternal Enjoyment

24 x 19 inches

The process of mezzotint engraving is complicated enough without the additional issue of adding colour to the plates. With this pair, coloured inks have been applied to the plate a la poupee (using rags) and then the detail has been finished by hand. It would have been a very time consuming and highly skilled process so prints such as these would have commanded a high price when sold.

The subject matter here is unequivocally sentimental and moralistic. A young sailor, fresh from his voyages, distributes money to a rustic family at the cottage door. In the second plate the mother gives food to her infant son and encourages him to continue the philanthropy by helping a poor beggar, possibly a sailor himself who has fallen upon hard times. With such a large fleet and so many battles being fought overseas, Georgian England had a disproportionately high number of men recruited to either the army or navy at any one time. Communities were used to sailors and soldiers passing through and scenes such as these would have been commonplace across the land.