The Gipsies, 1770

Satire on gipsies. A village scene, in which an old gipsy woman with a baby on her back, reads the palm of a neatly dressed young woman, evidently just come from the church in the background; another young woman leans on her shoulder and a boy with a toy drum stands at her feet look up curiously at the gipsy; a second boy stands behind. A ragged gipsy man and child sit at the old woman's feet gnawing at bones while a dog, drooling, watches them attentively. Their donkey stands behind the man, a scrawny goose's head hanging from a panier; in the background to left, on the far side of a country road, a gipsy woman breast-feeds her baby while a young boy tends a fire on which a cauldron has been placed. A sailor rides along the road, raising a club to beat his horse; an anxious young woman sits behind the sailor, her arms around his waist. On the right is a thatched cottage from the upper window of which leans an old woman knocking two cats off the roof with a broom; at the door stands a scotsman reading a copy of the "north briton no. 45"; in front of the ramshackle fence are two turkeys and a milkpail. 10 november 1770 etching and engraving. Date: 1770. Dimensions: Height: 480 mm; Width: 480 mm. Medium: paper. Collection: British Museum.