Analysis Of James Gillray's Piece, Comfort To The Corns

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James Gillray’s Piece titled Comfort to the Corns represents an old women sitting next to a blazing fire while trying to seek comfort of relief from the corns on her feet. This piece was created in 1800 published by Hannah Humphrey. It is currently located in the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art in a special exhibit called Cats and Quote. It is displayed upstairs in a private room in an intimate setting on a wall. To get a best view you must go up close so you can see how the artist uses hand coloring and etching on paper. From my research James Gillray is known as the father of political cartoons.
Comfort to the Corns is the prime example of how James Gillray mainly uses muted color representation in his artwork. However, Gillray uses a select few colors in this piece. The colors are brown, black, grey, white, dark blue, yellow and reddish-orange. The elderly woman’s face, arms and feet are pale white while her cat is colored a reddish – orange. Yet, the background is …show more content…

Even though, the light source is to the right side of the drawing due to the fact that Gillray uses a light grey color on top of black that is already shown on the left side of the fireplace, which makes a shadow of her foot on the ground. The artist uses a few of both warm and light colors for the woman’s wardrobe and chair that contrasts with the background. The light colors make the woman stand out even more from the background. Besides, I feel as if the artist tried to make the woman’s feet and the knife appear larger than it really is. The reason why I say this is due to the fact that normally women’s feet are little and not that big. From observing the drawing, it seems as if the cat is being compared to the elderly woman. Cats are self-centered animals that spend a lot of time pampering themselves. From looking at this drawing the women seems as if she spends a great amount of time tending to the horrible corns on her

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