"This is a pair of prints, one depicting a man and the other a woman in death and in life. They were produced by unidentified printmakers working for the London publishers Bowles & Carver in the mid-18th century.
This impression has old hand-colouring in gouache. On the right, is the man as a living nobleman in a Stowe- or Stourhead-like landscape, with still-life objects symbolising vain pleasures. Among these are a family tree, representing 'Pedigree', an admission ticket to a masquerade at the Pantheon, dice, a pack of cards, golf or hockey sticks and balls, a volume of 'the Rambler', a lottery ticket, an invitation from Lord Bauble, and a curved set of blocks with the letter E in bas relief in the upper row and the letter O in the lower row.
On the left is the man as a skeleton holding a gravedigger's spade, in a graveyard with monumental tombs and some bones. The sky on the death-side is stormy grey, on the life-side, azure. Inscribed on the tomb is "The wages of sin is death" from St Paul's Epistle to the Romans, and other quotations from the books of Job, I Peter, Psalms, and Epistle to the Hebrews, and from the contemporary poets Alexander Pope and Abraham Cowley."
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