Scotch Training for a Milling Match

This hand-colored etching depicts Scottish figures in a domestic interior, engaged in violent sparring—a 'milling match' or prizefight. The print descends from the tradition of Hogarth and Gillray, who used etching and hand-coloring to depict social types and regional identities for urban audiences. Such prints circulated widely as cheap, topical entertainment, establishing visual conventions—caricatured physiognomy, narrative sequence, moral commentary—that would later structure the comic strip.