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Cruikshank, Devon Wrestlers (1824)

  • April 10, 2026
  • April 10, 2026
  • 1 min read
  • George Cruikshank

A woodcut by George Cruikshank, currently held in the British Museum (id: 1978,U.3287). It bears the label:

Two Cornish men wrestling, a large crowd of rustic men gathered around the ring and watching with interest, some seated on a bench, flags flying from the covered stand behind; a version of the etching; illustration to the unpublished “Herbet Letters” (1824)
Woodcut

However, the use of shoes, and the clear demonstration of kicking (‘loose leg’) makes Devon style more likely. Credit to Tom Billinge for tracking down the inventory reference.

Dimensions: Height: 102 millimetres (sheet), Width: 130 millimetres
Bibliographic reference: Reid 1871 / A descriptive catalogue of the works of George Cruikshank (5120) (?)(5120)
Full entry at the British Museum.

© The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.

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