Used-Up Partners: Go On, Stanley, if You Can Keep Step with Her, You're a Better Dancer than either of Us

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Used-Up Partners: Go On, Stanley, if You Can Keep Step with Her, You're a Better Dancer than either of Us

Sir David Low (1891-1963)

Price

£2,750

Signed

Signed
Inscribed with title below mount
Signed, inscribed 'with every good wish to the new partner' and dated 6.7.'23 by ramsay macdonald on original mount

Medium

Ink and watercolour with pencil

Dimensions

9 ½ x 11 ¼ inches

Provenance

Originally Given by Ramsay Macdonald To Stanley Baldwin

Illustrated

The Star, 12 June 1923, page 3

Exhibited

'The Illustrators. The British Art of Illustration 1837-2012', November 2012 - January 2013, no 250

Since the First World War, the French statesman, Raymond Poincaré (1860-1934), had been pressing for reparations for damage caused by Germany, his terms of office as Prime Minister and President giving him particular leverage. He had placed pressure on successive British Ministers: the Liberals David Lloyd George (1863-1945) and Andrew Bonar Law (1858-1923), and then, from May 1923, the Conservative, Stanley Baldwin (1867-1947). Poincaré and Baldwin came to an agreement on the matter when they met in Paris on 19 September, and the announcement of the concord led the German government to capitulate four days later.

David Low likened Poincaré’s tenacity to that of a ‘non-stop dancer’, dance marathons having become highly popular. On 23 May 1923, Punch noted that ‘it is reported that during a non-stop dance in Paris one of the competitors collapsed owing to brain trouble’ (page 481). In Low’s cartoon, Lloyd George and Bonar Law seem to have suffered the same fate.

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