The Kentish Hop Merchant and the Lecturer on Optics!! RMG F8601

The Kentish Hop Merchant and the Lecturer on Optics!!
A satirical hand-coloured etching by Isaac Cruikshank, based on a drawing by the caricaturist George Woodward. The engraving satirises the proceedings of a lecture on science when a Kentish merchant, depicted as a John Bull-type, mistakes the subject of ‘Optics’ for ‘Hop sticks’. On the table in front of the bemused and bespectacled lecturer are a magic lantern, a telescope on a stand and a small spyglass. This caricatures both the ignorance of provincials and the increasing number of scientific lecturers who toured the country in the early nineteenth century, aiming for the fashionable popularity of the metopolis's Royal Institution. The small section of audience depicted in this print includes two well-dressed women.

The Kentish Hop Merchant and the Lecturer on Optics!!