Would be Dandies Toilette: The Last Chemisette. The Cravat. Dress’d.

A rare set of three George Farquhar Irish issued satirical cartoons by the Dublin based publisher William McCleary with his 39 Nassau St, Dublin address in the publication line which he was at only in 1820.

The set of three prints depict a Dandy getting dressed and are copied from Issac Robert Cruickshank’s caricatures, published 26 October 1818.

The Last Chemistte: A dandy in a late stage of decay crouches over the fire (where an iron is heating) on a small stool, holding out his shirt, befrilled and collared, but sleeveless. He wears tightly laced stays over bare flesh, which is ravaged by insects or skin-disease, with ragged drawers and socks. Other ragged garments hang from a string across the fireplace, others project from a crock (right) where they are being washed. Boots, blacking, &c., are on the floor. Coat, hat, trousers, and eyeglass lie on a makeshift bed; an overcoat hangs on a coat-hanger. His hair is brushed upwards from the neck with one lock arranged over the forehead. His whiskers are on a stand on the table, with broken combs, tooth-brush, &c. On the wall hang his umbrella, a pair of bootsoles, and a red herring. On the chimney-piece, with medicine-bottle, tea-pot, &c., is a ballad headed by a gibbet with corpses. On a box which forms a head to the bed are band-box, cane, cracked mirror, &c.

The Cravat: A Dandy is at a table in front of the fireplace, tying his cravat. On the table is a laundry receipt. On the floor is an open book titles; The Beau Stratagom, referring to George Farquhar’s, comedy The Beaux’ Stratagem, first produced at the Theatre Royal, London, on March 8, 1707.

Dress’d: The Dandy now totally transformed, admires himself in the mirror.

The practice of dandyism first appeared in the revolutionary 1790s, both in London and in Paris. Charles Baudelaire defined the dandy: “Contrary to what a lot of thoughtless people seem to believe, dandyism is not even an excessive delight in clothes and material elegance. For the perfect dandy, these things are no more than the symbol of the aristocratic superiority of his mind.”