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My dingy dear ...
Publisher: Strong, Thomas W.
A lithograph in black ink with hand colouring in red, green, yellow, brown and blue paint on 4to-size very thin, white wove paper and surrounded by a circular lithographed border of flowers printed in blue ink. At the centre is a caricature of a black man as Dandy, depicted striking a foppish pose and wearing top hat, monocle and striped breeches, promenading arm in arm with an older black woman. A number printed within the illustration at lower left: '36', indicates that this valentine is one of a series. A verse is printed below: 'My dingy dear, when you appear / My heart goes pit-a-pat / So black your face, thick lips to grace / And nose so very flat.'. The interior is blank. One of four valentines from the same series, all with lithographed flower garland borders in blue ink, mounted together in album P.14416-R. Three of these were bought from the second-hand bookseller, R.S. Frampton (P.14416-R-17, P.14416-R-18 and P.14416-R-20), but P.14416-R-19 was either already owned by Glaisher or purchased later and mounted with the other three in album P.14416-R.
Bequeathed by Dr J. W. L. Glaisher, 1928
Method of acquisition: Bequeathed (1928) by Glaisher, J. W. L., Dr
19th Century
Circa
1842
-
Circa
1870
The image references the blackface minstrelsy stereotype of the coon - a comic figure who was characterised as lazy and good-for-little and who was often depicted as a gaudily-dressed Dandy who put on airs. The verse is part of a ballad found in Valentine writers of the period, titled variously 'To a Blackamoor' (or in American valentine publisher, Thomas W. Strong's 'Comic Valentine Writer', to 'a black') and published in 19th-century valentine writers, such as here: http://ballads.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/search/roud/V21030 [Accessed 7 June 2022]. See also P.14416-R-12, where the second part of the same verse is ascribed to a comic Valentine caricature of a black woman.
Accession number: P.14416-R-19
Primary reference Number: 215164
Stable URI
Owner or interested party:
The Fitzwilliam Museum
Associated department:
Paintings, Drawings and Prints
This record can be cited in the Harvard Bibliographic style using the text below:
The Fitzwilliam Museum (2024) "My dingy dear ..." Web page available at: https://collection.beta.fitz.ms/id/object/215164 Accessed: 2024-04-23 14:26:52
To cite this record on Wikipedia you can use this code snippet:
{{cite web|url=https://collection.beta.fitz.ms/id/object/215164
|title=My dingy dear ...
|author=The Fitzwilliam Museum|accessdate=2024-04-23 14:26:52|publisher=The
University of Cambridge}}
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https://collection.beta.fitz.ms/api/v1/objects/object-215164
To use this as a simple code embed, copy this string:
<div class="text-center">
<figure class="figure">
<img src="https://data.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/imagestore/pdp/pdp77/P_14416_R_19_1_201608_amt49_dc2.jpg"
alt="My dingy dear ..."
class="img-fluid" />
<figcaption class="figure-caption text-info">My dingy dear ...</figcaption>
</figure>
</div>
Accession Number: P.12145-R
Accession Number: P.14417-R-27
Accession Number: P.14416-R-1
Accession Number: P.14557-R
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