Witchcraft is an important theme in Douce’s collection of prints and drawings. It has not been difficult, therefore, to find a few appropriate prints among his many images of witches, diableries, ghosts and goblins to celebrate Halloween:
This etching, which shows a startled man discovering three grumpy-looking goblins in a graveyard, is part of a series of six. Albeit undated and unsigned, they recall Richard Newton’s treatment of the same subject in a number of prints published the 1790s. I have not been able to match Douce’s with anything in David Alexander’s catalogue yet -but this is still work in progress. Rather than spooky, they are quite comic and light-hearted:
Although this does not look like a lot of fun:
The mischievous little demon has been replaced by a seriously scary flying monster, very similar to the hybrid creatures that populate witches’ sabbaths and images of the temptations of St Antony, of which Douce collected many examples. Moreover, he owned two sets of Goya’s Caprichos (1799), which include the following plate entitled Bon Voyage:
Francisco Goya, Buen Viaje, 1799, etching, burnished aquatint and burin (The British Museum, London).
Goya’s disturbing images may derive from the sensationalist accounts of witches’ activities published in popular prints and in chap-books, like the one from which Douce probably took these two -rather sweet- woodcuts:
