The Bottle: Plate 1. A Happy Home in Danger from the Bottle by unknown lithographer

Description:

This black and white tinted print depicts the first of eight scenes based on George Cruikshank's The Bottle. The series shows the progressive degeneration of a family due to the evils of drinking. This print is an interior scene of a man, a woman, and three children. The man and woman are seated at a table, and he is pouring a drink for her. They are surrounded by comfortable middle-class furnishings that include a fireplace with stove insert, pictures on the wall, and a clock on the mantle. A cat and a kitten play by the fire near the two younger children.

This series of prints is by the English artist George Cruikshank (1792-1878). Cruikshank’s father, Isaac Cruikshank, was an artist who specialized in song sheets and caricatures and trained George and his brother Robert Cruikshank in these arts. George started as a caricaturist for magazines and children’s books. His most famous works included The Bottle and The Drunkard’s Children, designed and etched by Cruikshank to show the wickedness of alcohol. Cruikshank's father and brother were both alcoholics and he himself drank heavily until he took a vow of abstinence in 1847. These prints were published by David Bogue, who published most of Cruikshank’s other works in the 1850s. David Bogue, (1807–1856) was born in Scotland and moved to London in 1836. Bogue began working in Charles Tilt's bookshop as a publisher and bookseller in 1836 and became Tilt's partner in 1840. Bogue bought the shop in 1843. He was the principle publisher of Cruikshank’s short-lived periodicals, brief illustrated stories, and the Comic Almanack 1835-53. David Bogue published The Bottle series in 1847. Bogue suffered from heart disease and died in 1856 at the age of 48. There is no information available about the lithographer of this series however the inscription on the print reads COPYRIGHTED BY M. MARQUES, 1885.