John Collet was born in London around 1725, the son of a gentleman in public office, and studied under George Lambert as well as at the St Martin’s Lane Academy. He first exhibited with the Free Society of Artists in 1761, sending three landscapes, but soon focused on humorous subjects in the style of William Hogarth, whose ‘comedy in art’ he sought to emulate. [1] Collet’s works were widely popular, with engravings after his paintings published by Carington Bowles, Smith & Sayer, Boydell, and various prominent publishers of the day. He continued to exhibit with the Free Society until 1783. His scenes range from mild social satire to depictions of debauchery and provide valuable insights into eighteenth-century British life. In 1775, he produced images inspired by Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s comedy The Duenna, including a drinking scene in the convent (Act III, Scene 5) noted in Thomas Wright’s History of Caricature and Grotesque in Art. Collet inherited a respectable fortune and lived in Chelsea, where he died in Cheyne Row on 6 August 1780. 

In his lifetime, Collet was celebrated as the ‘second Hogarth,’ with over eighty comic prints made after his oil paintings and watercolours. Despite his popularity, modern scholarship has largely neglected him, often framing him solely within studies of graphic satire and overlooking his role in the evolving exhibition culture of eighteenth-century London. The present watercolour was engraved around 1770 by Samuel Smith, with a surviving impression held in the Kohler Art Library, University of Wisconsin.