This sheet illustrates a traditional nursery rhyme: The Man in the Moon. Worked in pencil and then in ink, Dance has shown two episodes, on the left, ‘the Man in the Moon’, drawn with a crescent on his head, theatrically lost, apparently in search of Norwich. On the right, Dance shows ‘The Man in the South’ howling in discomfort, having scalded his mouth on ‘cold plum porridge’! Dance probably made this comic drawings for friends and family, although there is evidence that some were etched. This charming drawing formed part of an album assembled by the statesman and connoisseur, George Ashburnham, Viscount St Asaph.
George Dance, the son of a successful architect, also George, and brother to the painter Nathaniel, was himself an accomplished and celebrated architect. A founder member of the Royal Academy, Dance was also a fluent and prolific draughtsman. Dance never let architecture dominate his life. He was a man of wide-ranging interests, and in later years he gained greater satisfaction from arts other than architecture. He possessed considerable musical skill as an instrumentalist and composer: Haydn became a valued friend. His interest in drawing also grew: his distinctive and highly finished pencil profile portraits constituted a vivid gallery of Regency London's artistic establishment of the day, and etchings after them by William Daniell were published in 1804–14. Simultaneously, Dance delighted in producing humorous cartoons and caricatures and a sizeable body of his amusing drawing survives.