Put the tip of it … to my Lips
Charles Edmund Brock
Photomechanical reproduction of pen and ink drawing
5½ x 3½ inches
Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels, 111
A companion piece to Gulliver’s kissing of the hand of the queen of the Lilliputians, with the situation reversed. Brock magnifies the disparity of scale by drawing a contrast between the details of the queen’s costume and the simplicity of Gulliver’s costume – one overpowers the eye and has significant visual presence, while the other is almost too small and indeterminate to see. The adventurer is further measured against the details of the table, and is smaller than the ornamental beasts beneath his feet.
Scanned image and text by Simon Cooke.