Carl Guttenberg, John Dixon
The Tea-Tax-Tempest, or the Anglo-American Revolution
1777
Scroll
Carl Guttenberg, John Dixon
The Tea-Tax-Tempest, or the Anglo-American Revolution
1777
Physical Qualities
Etching and engraving, Sheet: 463 x 535 mm. (18 1/4 x 21 1/16 in.)
Plate: 410 x 490 mm. (16 1/8 x 19 5/16 in.)
Image: 330 x 430 mm. (13 x 16 15/16 in.)
Credit Line
The George A. Lucas Collection, purchased with funds from the State of Maryland, Laurence and Stella Bendann Fund, and contributions from individuals, foundations, and corporations throughout the Baltimore community
Object Number
1996.48.15185
One form of popular entertainment in the eighteenth century was the magic lantern, a device that operated like the modern-day slide machine. Here we see the figure of Father Time leaning a magic lantern on a globe to show allegorical figures of the four continents - from left to right, America, Africa, Europe and Asia - a slide with fantastic imagery relating to the American Revolution. At the center of the image is an exploding tea pot which sends a snake and a Phrygian cap - the symbol of liberty - into the air. British troops flee to the left as American forces march forward to the right. Carl Guttenberg made this print in Paris the same year that France took up the American cause.
Yvonne Korshak, "The Liberty Cap as a Revolutionary Symbol in American and France," Smithsonian Studies in American Art I (Fall 1987) p. 58, fig. 12
Donald H. Creswell, The American Revolution in drawings and prints; a checklist of 1765-1790 graphics in the Library of Congress (Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 1975), cat. 738.
Donald H. Creswell, The American Revolution in drawings and prints; a checklist of 1765-1790 graphics in the Library of Congress (Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 1975), cat. 738.
Signed: 1
Inscribed: Recto: in image, lower left, in plate "C.G. / 4F"; in image, lower left, in plate "N"; below image, lower right, in plate: "1778"; below image, lower center, in plate "The Tea-Tax-Tempest, or the Anglo-American Revolution [with title in German, then French below]"; below image, lower left, in graphite indecipherable; below image, lower right, in graphite "-15185- / M678 / 23"
Markings: WM: unidentified