Which Way Shall I Turn Me

This hand-colored etching depicts a corpulent man in black coat and white-powdered hair standing between a table of food and wine and a reclining woman on a striped sofa, his gesture expressing comic indecision. The print exemplifies late-18th-century satirical caricature's focus on bodily excess, appetite, and moral weakness—stock figures in the tradition established by Hogarth and developed by Gillray and Rowlandson. The exaggerated physiognomy and grotesque portrayal reflect period conventions that conflated physical appearance with character, a vocabulary later inherited by comic illustration. Such prints circulated as affordable popular entertainment, using visual distortion and suggestive scenes to mock the vices and vanities of recognizable social types, establishing visual satire as a democratic medium preceding the modern comic form.