A Sphere, Projecting Against a Plane

James Gillray

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Gillray cast two well-known public figures as geometrical opposites in this potent image, a prime example of exaggeration and contrast as sources of visual humor. William Pitt, who twice served as Britain's head of government (1783–1801, 1804–6), was a tall, thin, frugal workaholic. The Honorable Albinia Hobart, later Countess of Buckinghamshire, was heavily obese, a gifted amateur thespian, an avid gambler, and an enthusiastic supporter of Pitt's chief political rival, Charles James Fox. Gillray often caricatured each of them, but he generally placed Pitt in political situations and Mrs. Hobart in social ones. Here, he brought them together in an abstracted space with physiques exaggerated to the point of absurdity. Pitt stands in profile to represent a plane, while Mrs. Hobart's contours have been dissolved to form a sphere. No longer able to walk, she must be conveyed on a trolley, since rolling would be indelicate. Gillray emphasized the mathematical foundation of the joke by placing a Euclidian definition below.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.

Metropolitan Museum of Art