THE WORSHIP OF BACCHUS BY GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
The Worship of Bacchus
This page contains high resolution images of "The Worship of Bacchus" by George Cruikshank. The image above has been scanned (and greatly reduced in size with considerable loss of detail - the original is 43 by 27 inches) from George Cruikshank's 1864 print of his oil painting which was on exhibition at the Tate Britain in 2001. A scaled down colour image of the oil painting is available on the BBC web site but this is at low resolution and does not allow the full detail to be viewed. "The Worship of Bacchus" contains hundreds of different scenes showing the ill effects of excessive drinking. These are best viewed either by visiting the Tate Britain where the oil painting covers the whole of a wall, or by downloading one of the following images of the monochrome print.
Images
| medium resolution image of the print | 200 dpi at full size - 7 megabytes, good enough to view at close quarters and pick up most of the detail or |
| high resolution reduced size image of the print | reduced to A3 size at 300 dpi |
| very high resolution image of the print | 400 dpi at full size - 23 megabytes, for those wanting to produce professional quality prints or to extract particular scenes at high resolution- this image will take a long time to download |
Viewing the images
The 400 dpi image is too big to be viewed in a web browser or in Microsoft Paint or Photo Editor. A more powerful image editor is needed to display it.
Details
You can, with these tools, produce your own details from the full picture. My favourite features the law and the lawyers and can be viewed here. There is another legal scene here (for more on alcoholic lawyers click here). And here is very liquid "fête champêtre" to raise funds "for those by beer and gin made destitute and homeless".
Obtaining a copy
If you would like your own full size copy of the print on high quality paper taken from the original plate, you can buy this for £160 (unframed and unmounted) from Easyart.
If you are interested in publishing the print as a poster (perhaps reduced to A1 size), feel free to do so. Copyright in the artwork has expired and no copyright is claimed in the digital image. If you would like a copy of the uncompressed tiff file please let me know (form below).
Links
The image was scanned by Secure Data Services.
Robert Upstone's book "The Worship of Bacchus in Focus" is available from the Tate Britain bookshop or online for £4.99.
For good quality images of more caricatures by George Cruikshank (with some by Isaac and Robert Cruikshank) visit http://www.pemberley.com/janeinfo/rgnclfil.html (contains mainly prints from his Regency Period).
This drawing of a game of chess is from my collection.
A useful set of links to Cruikshank's work is at http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/cruikshank_george.html
19th April 2004
| Jonathan Goodliffe |
| 136 Clonmore Street, London SW18 5HB |
| Tel 020 8870 1601 |
| Fax 020 8870 1601 |
