Spanish-Patriots Attacking the French-Banditti– Loyal Britons Lending a Lift

Spanish-Patriots Attacking the French-Banditti– Loyal Britons Lending a Lift

James Gillray

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Gillray created this dynamic satire to celebrate a Spanish-British victory over an overwhelmingly superior enemy at the Battle of Bailén in southern Spain, during the Peninsular War (1807–14). His dynamic conception encapsulates a rare defeat for French occupying forces on July 16–19, 1808. In the left background, members of a Spanish outpost fire at fleeing opponents below while, in the middle distance, a trumpet-blowing monk on horseback rallies followers with the help of a bishop armed with sword and crosier. Greatest attention is given to a series of foreground skirmishes. These center on enraged nuns who engage soldiers in hand-to-hand combat, one grasping the hair of a French general whose tall thin physique identifies him as Pierre Dupont de l’Étang. Near barrels of British gunpowder at left, Spanish men and women dressed in old fashioned attire load a canon while, at right,a sturdy British grenadier bayonets emaciated French soldiers and tramples a tricolour flag lettered "Invincible Legion." The latter gruesome grouping embodies the "lift" of the title in a vebal-visual pun typical of Gillray's unflinching wit (see 2015.455 for a related drawing).

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Spanish-Patriots Attacking the French-Banditti– Loyal Britons Lending a LiftSpanish-Patriots Attacking the French-Banditti– Loyal Britons Lending a LiftSpanish-Patriots Attacking the French-Banditti– Loyal Britons Lending a LiftSpanish-Patriots Attacking the French-Banditti– Loyal Britons Lending a LiftSpanish-Patriots Attacking the French-Banditti– Loyal Britons Lending a Lift

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.