A Warm Place — Hell - photo 1
A Warm Place — Hell - photo 2

A Warm Place — Hell

Lot 637
24.01.2025 10:00UTC -05:00
Classic
Sold
$ 69 300
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
Event locationUSA, New York
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Archive
ID 1362286
Lot 637 | A Warm Place — Hell
Estimate value
$ 30 000 – 50 000
A Warm Place — Hell
Paul Revere, 1768
[REVERE, Paul (1735-1818), CHURCH, Benjamin (1734-1778).] A Warm Place — Hell…. While gasping Freedom wails her future fate, and Commerce sickens with the sick'ning State… [Boston: Edes & Gill, 1768].

"The Rescinders print… one of the rarest of Revere's Engravings…" Brigham

An exceedingly rare example of one of Revere's better-known engravings preserved on broadside that includes a twenty line poem together with the names of the infamous seventeen Massachusetts legislators who complied with Governor Bernard's motion to rescind the content of a circular letter opposing the Townshend Acts. These men, shown here approaching the mouth of Hell prodded on by two devils, were vastly outnumbered in the provincial assembly—92 members voted not to rescind and were celebrated in Boston and beyond as the "glorious Ninety-two." According to Brigham, Ephraim Eliot showed a copy of this engraving to an eighty-year-old Revere, who remarked that he and not seen a copy in forty years, observing that "he was a young man, zealous in the cause of liberty when he sketched it & had forgotten the circumstances," but he did recall that while he was working on the plate, Dr. Benjamin Church (then still a leading Whig, but later turned Loyalist), saw it and composed the six line poem that appears just below the image beginning with "On brave Rescinders!" (Brigham, 47).

Like many of his engravings, Revere borrowed the image, this example from a cartoon bearing the same title published in The Scots Scourge; Being A Compleat Supplement to the British Antidote to Caledonian Poison… (London: Printed for J. Pridden, [1765]. Vol.1, Plate 22.) Revere increased the number from six to seventeen, added a flying devil who shouts "Push on Tim," a reference to Loyalist Timothy Ruggles, as well as the addition of the Province House's cupola with Shem Drowne's figure of an Indian with bow and arrow at the top. One figure is depicted with a calf's head, evidently a reference to Dr. John Calef, an outspoken Loyalist from Ipswich. Revere signed the engraving with an alias, namely the London engraver, Matthew Darly, who produced numerous satirical prints in the 1750s and 1760s often with the approval of Parliament.

Extremely Rare, the only copy in private ownership. Brigham identifies the print in two editions. The first included just the title, image and Church's poem and exists in two copies, one at the John Carter Brown Library and the other at the American Antiquarian Society. This, presumably the second edition, was first discovered in a copy at the Sheffield City Library among a bundle of papers in July 1768. The Massachusetts Historical Society holds a copy that lacks the Revere engraving. Thus this is the second known complete copy of this state and the only example in private ownership. First edition: Brigham, pp. 44-46, plate 10. Second edition: Brigham, plate 11; Evans 41899; Bristol B2965; Ford, W.C. Broadsides, 1469. Provenance: A.T. White — by descent to the consignor.

Broadside 390 x 242mm, plate mark at top 111 x 132mm (lower porition of engraved plate faint with final line of poem and printer's credit only slightly visible, creases, in offsetting to lower half). Docketed on verso in ink, "The 17 Rescinders Burlesque 'Push on Tim'" and "by Paul Revere 1768," in pencil below.
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