Gilbert Stuart, American
The Right Honorable William Brownlow, With the Paper Hat He Wears at His Fry Cook Job, ca. 1790
Oil on canvas
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Artist info is pointed to in my comment at another blog entry.
/// Irish linen’s spun out of pure flax,
with a quality other cloth lacks.
It is sold for high price
and the profits are nice,
since the workers are living in shacks.
/// Shown here fingerin’ fine Irish linen,
William Brownlow’s kin were the beginnin’
of that industry which is
what had brought him his riches,
and a Parliament seat he’d long been in.
/// Mister Brownlow kept winning his seat
in the Parliament— (“safe” seats are sweet).
The Right Honorable
title gave him some pull,
and confirmed to him, “I’m the elite!”
/// William’s mills may be dark and satanic,
but his flax is completely organic.
His expression looks vain,
filled with haughty disdain;
if you cross him, there’s reason to panic.
/// Ned and Luddites saw looms and went manic,
for their life’s mission was Messianic.
“Progress” came at the cost
of so many jobs lost.
(Better study to be a mechanic.)
/// Brownlow’s painted as though smelling funk
from a not very far away skunk.
Gilbert Stuart paints, too,
his rich jacket of blue,
and a wig which appears to have shrunk.
/// Stuart fled England under the threat
that he might be imprisoned for debt.
So to Ireland he came.
Gilbert won greater fame
when George Washington he later met.