Super-sized Georgians

ON THE History Extra PODCAST

In 1773, John Raphael Smith produced a work of art called Miss Macaroni and Her Gallant at a Print-Shop 1. This scene (shown right) depicts a scenario ever more common on the Georgian high street: passers-by congregating around a shop front to gawp at portraits of fellow citizens depicted on a series of prints.

Georgian Britain was awash with printed images. Prints populated coffee houses, people’s homes and, as we can see in Raphael Smith’s work, even hung from dedicated shop windows. This was an age characterised by a “print revolution”, a technological and cultural transformation that saw more imagery available to view and to purchase than ever before.

This artistic revolution coincided with another transformation in 18th-century Britain: a sea change in the way that people depicted themselves. Gone was the era of deferential, idealised portraits of society’s leading lights, to be replaced by bawdy, colourful – and often deeply unflattering – works of satire. Georgian prints invariably poked fun at their subjects – and it’s for that very reason that the public loved them.

Although often amusing to our eyes today, the Georgian satire revolution tells us more