The Rising Sun; or, A View of the Continent

This hand-colored etching satirizes Napoleon's dominance of Europe through the metaphor of a rising sun. Personified nations—Spain, Portugal, Denmark, Finland, Holland, and Prussia—crowd around a dead lion labeled the "Crown of Naples," while a French military figure brandishes a sword overhead. The print's speeches mock rulers' powerlessness against French expansion. This work exemplifies the English satirical print tradition—descended from Hogarth and refined by Gillray and Rowlandson—that combined political commentary with crude humor and visual exaggeration. Such prints reached mass audiences and established visual codes of mockery that would echo through 19th-century chromolithography and into early comics.