‘The Dissolutuin; or The Alchymist Producing and Aetherial Prespresentation’, 1796

Description

Mounted hand coloured etching, entitled ‘The DISSOLUTION; or __ The Alchymist producing an AEtherial Representation’, designed and etched by James Gillray, and published by H. Humphrey in 1796.

The imagery of pharmacy and medicine is well used in the depiction of general political and social issues portrayed in many caricatures. This is a satire attacking the then Prime Minister William Pitt’s dissolution of Parliament in 1796, presenting it as a means to distribute patronage to his supporters.

The caricature is set in a laboratory in an apothecary’s shop. Pitt is depicted distilling a new parliament, where he is dictator, from the old one. Dressed in royal livery and seated on a “Model of th[e] new Barracks”, Pitt uses a crown-shaped bellows on a furnace supporting a large glass alembic containing a scene of the House of Commons.

From the alembic spout billows a cloud with an image of a new parliament, with Pitt worshipped by his subjects as a “Perpetual Dictator”. By the furnace is a scuttle of