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In the days before the National Trust and the museum movement, which created public collections that anyone, even members over the laboring classes, could visit in order to see works of art, so-called respectable members of society could gain admittance to the great homes of the very wealthy. As several of du Maurier’s cartoons show, a butler or housekeeper would provide a guided tour of their employer’s paintings and sculpture. The cartoonist here takes advantage of the culturally ignorant butler’s pride in his employer’s ancestry to create some class-based humor. Like many of the artist’s cartoons, this one is double edged: yes, we can laugh at the butler’s ignorance of Rembrandt’s importance, but it's also true many of his listeners have come as much to see how an old, wealthy family lives as for the art they own.

Looking at Works of Art

• "Professional Beauties of the Past"
• "A New Reading of a Famous Picture"
• At the R. A. -- Triumph of Realistic Art
• Instinctive Critical Acumen [Moses Striking the Rock]

What Artists, Authors, and Performers and Their Families Have to Put Up With

• "Equal to the Occasion"
• "Trials of a Painter's Wife"
• "Histrionic Egotism [an actor's self-centeredness]"
• "How Reputations of Distinguished Amateurs are Sometimes Made"
• "Precedence in Vanity Fair"
• "Two on a Tower"
• "Nature versus Art"
• Artistic Amenities
• "Distinguished Professionals"
• "Social Taradiddles"
• "What Our Artist Has to Put Up With"
• "The Mother of Invention"
• "Varnishing Day at the Royal Academy"

Bibliography

du Maurier, George. English Society. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1897.

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Created 1 July 2001

Last modified 1 May 2020