Jack's Trump of Defiance (caricature)

This print is an illustration from ‘Greenwich Hospital, A series of Naval Sketches, Descriptive of the Life of a Man-of-War’s Man. By an Old Sailor’, an account of the nautical tales of Matthew Henry Barker, published by James Robins in 1826 and illustrated by George Cruikshank (f. p.21). The print depicts a confrontation between Portuguese cavalry and British sailors in a plaza. A sailor steps out from the group to blow a defiant blast on a large funnel. His officers and shipmates laugh at his bravery behind him. A Union flag flies in the background. People watch from the windows and in front of the church beyond. Inscribed beneath the title and publication information: ‘G. Cruikshank s.c / London Pub April 1825 by J Robins & co Ivy Lane P.N Row’.

In ‘Greenwich Hospital, A series of Naval Sketches’, this print illustrated the chapter titled ‘Rio Janerio’, in which a sailor recalls a skirmish between English sailors and Portuguese cavalry: ‘And one Jack Tar excited an universal roar of laughter by advancing several paces in our front towards the cadets; and, applying the small end of a large tin funnel (used for filling the casks) to his mouth, he gave them a flourish of defiance in all the graceful attitudes of a theatrical trumpeter’ (page 24).

In this print, Cruikshank presents British sailors as both heroic and comical, as epitomised in the figure of the brave sailor blowing on his improvised trumpet.

A preliminary pencil study for this print is one of a number on a single sheet in the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York (ref. 1976.26:2).