Qualifying for a Campain [sic]

£3,800 · Offered by Maggs Bros Ltd

Rare. Not in the British Museum. There are copies at Yale (sheet trimmed, uncoloured), the Library of Congress (hand colouring) and the American Antiquarian Society (but it does not appear in the online catalogue). A satirical view of a supposed British military academy training soldiers to fight in the American Revolutionary War. In the foreground of this print child-like trainee officers take aim at cats ad attempt to topple a house of cards with a makeshift canon made from a pistol. In the background two officers reluctantly fence, their stances are wide and almost balletic. One officer averts his gaze from his opponent in fear, the other leans backwards comically, each have discs on the end of their sword to stop them inflicting any injury. Other officers stand around the edges of the room talking to one another and looking on. Hanging o the room’s back wall is a notice of “rules to be observed in the Academy”, and a map showing Boston and New York, the “Seat of War in North America”. The large map is in fact very similar to the many engraved maps and charts produced by the publishers of the present print, Robert Sayer and John Bennett, which announced to the British public the progress of the war in America. See The seat of action, between the British and American forces (1776) and The Seat of war in New England, by an American volunteer (1775). This print was published in June 1777, in the midst of the American War of Independence. It satirises the British officer class

• Year: 1777

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