The Recruiting Party
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| The Recruiting Party | |
|---|---|
_-_The_Recruiting_Party_-_Bristol_Museum.jpg) | |
| Artist | Edward Villiers Rippingille |
| Year | 1822 |
| Type | Oil on mahogany, genre painting |
| Dimensions | 83.4 cm × 135.9 cm (32.8 in × 53.5 in) |
| Location | City Museum and Art Gallery, Bristol |
The Recruiting Party is an 1822 genre painting by the English artist Edward Villiers Rippingille. It portrays a British Army recruiting party outside on an English village green outside an inn. Although the scene appears to be a merry one, it conveys a warning about the underhand practices of recruiting sergeants who would trick drunken young men into taking the King's shilling.[1]
It was shown at the Royal Academy Exhibition of 1822 at Somerset House in London, one of a number of genre paintings to attract interest along with David Wilkie's Chelsea Pensioners Reading the Waterloo Dispatch.[2] One reviewer claims it featured "the best representations of English peasantry" we ever saw.[3] Today it is in the collection of the Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery, having been acquired in 1917.[4]
