Thomas Rowlandson – Transplanting of Teeth – Satirical Etching, 1790

Striking original satirical etching by the celebrated English caricaturist Thomas Rowlandson (1757–1827), drawn in 1787 and published in London by William Holland in 1790.

The crowded scene lampoons the late eighteenth-century practice of transplanting healthy teeth from poor donors into the mouths of wealthy patients. At the centre, a young chimney sweep is restrained while a dentist extracts one of his teeth. Beside him, an elegantly dressed woman awaits its transplantation, holding a smelling bottle to her nose. To the right, a second dentist works on another fashionable patient, while a gentleman behind them studies his teeth in a mirror. At the far left, two ragged young donors leave the surgery in obvious pain; the girl examines the small payment she has received. A notice on the door advertises “Most Money Given for live Teeth.”

Tooth transplantation was a genuine, if controversial, fashionable procedure in Georgian England, encouraged in part by the experiments and writings of the surgeon John Hunter. Rowlandson turns the practice into a pointed commentary on social inequality: the healthy bodies of the poor are quite literally exploited for the benefit of the rich.

Signed and dated within the plate at lower left, “Rowlandson 1787,” and bearing the publication line: “London, Pub’d by Wm Holland, No. 50, Oxford Street, 1790.” Titled TRANSPLANTING OF TEETH beneath the image.

Examples of this important image are held by the British Museum, the Wellcome Collection, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Royal Collection. The Wellcome Collection identifies the William Holland issue as an etching published at 50 Oxford Street in 1790 and records it as British Museum catalogue number 7766.

Artist: Thomas Rowlandson (1757–1827)
Title: Transplanting of Teeth
Technique: Etching on paper
Designed: 1787
Published: London, William Holland, 1790
Reference: British Museum, Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires, no. 7766

Dimensions: 41 x 34.5 cm
Condition: Sheet trimmed to the edges of the image. Light surface smudging and slight undulation to the sheet.