Advanced Search 
Magic lantern shows --- done with the equivalent of a slide projector --- were a popular entertainment throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Here, the gods receive a magic-lantern news update on the political strife in Britain’s American colonies, which had declared their independence two years earlier. The trouble seems to emanate from a teapot at the center of the slide, a reminder that a tax on tea lay at the root of the turmoil. Guttenberg suggests that France has a hand in the dispute, in the form of the symbolic French rooster that keeps the teapot boiling by fanning the flames.
The Tea-Tax-Tempest, or the Anglo-American Revolution
Carl Gottlieb Guttenberg (German, 1743–1790)
1778
Medium/Technique
Engraving and etching on tan antique laid paper
Dimensions
Image: 40.9 x 48.9 cm (16 1/8 x 19 1/4 in.)
Sheet: 47.5 x 60.2 cm (18 11/16 x 23 11/16 in.)
Sheet: 47.5 x 60.2 cm (18 11/16 x 23 11/16 in.)
Credit Line
Bequest of Abram Edmands Cutter
Accession Number01.8906
NOT ON VIEW
CollectionsEurope, Prints and Drawings
ClassificationsPrints
Magic lantern shows --- done with the equivalent of a slide projector --- were a popular entertainment throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Here, the gods receive a magic-lantern news update on the political strife in Britain’s American colonies, which had declared their independence two years earlier. The trouble seems to emanate from a teapot at the center of the slide, a reminder that a tax on tea lay at the root of the turmoil. Guttenberg suggests that France has a hand in the dispute, in the form of the symbolic French rooster that keeps the teapot boiling by fanning the flames.
State
First
ProvenanceBy 1900, Abram Edmands Cutter (b. 1822 - d. 1900), Brookline, MA; 1901, bequest of Abram Edmands Cutter to the MFA. (Date accessioned: October 1, 1901)