Additional Images

Literature:

See Schiffer, THE BRASS BOOK, pg. 108 for a similar (yet unidentified) example.

Note:

By tradition Rowlandson's sprightly drawing of a decrepit bon vivant is a caricature of William Douglas, 4th Duke of Queensberry (1725–1810), or “Old Q,” as he was popularly known. As the most famous rake of the later eighteenth century, his amorous exploits were the stuff of legend. The sexual appetites of this lifelong bachelor were prodigious and, according to one who knew him in his final years, “he pursued pleasure under every shape; with as much ardour at fourscore as he had done at twenty” (Wraxall, 1836, vol. 2, p. 160). Rumor had it he was even drawing up plans to build a seraglio onto his house at Richmond (Robinson, 1895, p. 203). Rowlandson exploits Queensbury's voraciousness to the full, allowing him to revel in the incongruous union of the eager young mistress and her geriatric lover. He is shown, as one wag described him in 1794, “insatiate yet with Jolly's sport . . . ogling and hobbling down St James's Street” (Thomas Mathias as cited in Godfrey, 2001, p. 222). Sadly for Queensbury, Rowlandson's caricature was right on the mark, for by this time “his person had then become a ruin” (Wraxall, 1836, vol. 2, p. 160). One eye had failed, his hearing was going, and he had lost nearly all his teeth. But despite his physical frailty he still cut a dashing figure. In this drawing Rowlandson portrays the old duke as an irrepressible dandy, his Star of the Thistle prominently displayed on his fashionably tight-fitting clothes (Ribeiro, 1989, p. 132). As one friend noted, in later life “even his figure, though emaciated, still remained elegant” (Wraxall, 1836, vol. 2, p. 160). Rowlandson inscribed the drawing in his own hand, describing Queensbury as a “Debauchee.” In eighteenth-century parlance the “debauchee” was wholly abandoned to the pursuit of sensual pleasure, inhabiting a totally different league of immorality from the merely occasional, or accidental, debaucher.
-- Matthew Hargraves, Yale Center for British Art, 2007-01