English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. Graham Everitt
have not seen their way to render it possible for him to supply specimens of the style of certain artists, two of whom in particular, John Leech and H. K. Browne, must needs be conspicuous by their comparative absence.
Such Caricatures and Book Illustrations as have seemed specially desirable—of which the copyrights have lapsed and no editions are at the present day in print—have been engraved for this work by Mr. William Cheshire.
ENGLISH CARICATURISTS.
CHAPTER I.
OF THE ENGLISH CARICATURE AND ITS DECAY.
If you turn to the word “caricatura” in your Italian dictionary, it is Definition of Caricature just possible that you will be gratified by learning that it means “caricature”; but if you refer to the same word in old Dr. Johnson, he will tell you, with the plain, practical common-sense which distinguished him, that it signifies “an exaggerated resemblance in drawings,” and this expresses exactly what it does mean. Any distinguishing feature or peculiarity, whether in face, figure, or dress, is exaggerated, and yet the likeness is preserved. A straight nose is presented unnaturally straight, a short nose unnaturally depressed; a prominent forehead is drawn unusually bulbous; a protuberant jaw unnaturally underhung; a fat man is depicted preternaturally fat, and a thin one correspondingly lean. This at least was the idea of caricature during the last century. Old Francis Grose, who, in 1791, wrote certain “Rules for Drawing Caricaturas,” gives us the following explanation of their origin:—“The sculptors of ancient Greece,” he tells us, “seem to have diligently observed the form and proportions constituting the European ideas of beauty, and upon them to have formed their statues. These measures are to be met with in many drawing books; a slight deviation from them by the predominancy of any feature constitutes what is called character, and serves to discriminate the owner thereof and to fix the idea of identity. This deviation or peculiarity aggravated, forms caricatura.”
As a matter of fact, the strict definition of the word given by Francis Grose and Dr. Johnson is no longer applicable; the word caricature includes, and has for a very long time been understood to include, within its meaning any pictorial or graphic satire, political or otherwise, and whether the drawing be exaggerated or not: it is in this sense that Mr. Wright makes use of it in his “Caricature History of the Georges,” and it is in this sense that we shall use it for the purposes of this present book.
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| Rowlandson.] THE TRUMPET AND THE BASSOON. | Rowlandson.] [January 1st, 1796. “ANYTHING WILL DO FOR AN OFFICER.” “What shall we do with him?” “Do with him? Why, make an officer of him!” [Face p. 2. |
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| T. Rowlandson.] [April 13th, 1807. “ALL THE TALENTS.” The “Broad-Bottom Administration,” known as “All the Talents,” showing the several qualifications of the Ministry. [Face p. 3. |
Since the commencement of the present century, and more Change in the Spirit of English Caricature. especially during the last fifty years, a change has come over the spirit of English caricature. The fact is due to a variety of causes, amongst which must be reckoned the revolution in dress and manners; the extinction of the three-bottle men and topers; the change of thought, manners, and habits consequent on the introduction of steam, railways, and the electric telegraph. The casual observer meeting, as he sometimes will, with a portfolio of etchings representing the men with red and bloated features, elephantine limbs, and huge paunches, who figure in the caricatures of the last and the early part of the present century, may well be excused if he doubt whether such figures of fun ever had an actual existence. Our answer is that they not only existed, but were very far from uncommon. Our great-grandfathers of 1800 were jolly good fellows; washing down their beef-steaks with copious draughts of “York or Burton ale,” or the porter for which Trenton, of Whitechapel, appears to have been famed,1 fortifying themselves afterwards with deeper draughts of generous wines—rich port, Madeira, claret, dashed with hermitage—they set up before they were old men paunches and diseases which rendered them a sight for gods and men. Reader, be assured that the fat men who figure in the graphic satires of the early part of the century were certainly not caricatured.
In connection with the subject of graphic satire, the names of the The three great Caricaturists of the Last Century. three great caricaturists of the last century—Gillray, Rowlandson, and Bunbury—are indispensable. The last, a gentleman of family, fortune, and position, and equerry to the Duke of York, was, in truth, rather an amateur than an artist. Rowlandson was an able draughtsman, and something more; but his style and his tastes are essentially coarse and sensual, and his women are the overblown beauties of the Drury Lane and Covent Garden of his day. George Moutard Woodward, whose productions he sometimes honoured by etching, and whose distinguishing characteristics are carelessness and often bad drawing, follows him at a respectful distance. The genius of James Gillray has won him the title of the “Prince of Caricaturists,” a title he well earned and thoroughly deserved. The only one of the nineteenth century caricaturists who touches him occasionally in caricature, but distances him in everything else, is our George Cruikshank.
Commencing work when George the Third was still a young man, Gillray and Rowlandson necessarily infused into it some of the coarseness and vulgarity of their century. With Gillray, indeed, this coarseness and vulgarity may be said to be rather the exception than the rule, whereas the exact contrary holds good of his able and too often careless contemporary. As might have been expected, every one who excites their ridicule or contempt is treated and (in their letterpress descriptions) spoken of in the broadest manner. Bonaparte is mentioned by both artists (in allusion to his supposed sanguinary propensities) as “Boney, the carcase butcher;” Josephine is represented by Gillray as a coarse fat woman, with the sensual habits of a Drury Lane strumpet; Talleyrand, by right of his club foot and limping gait, is invariably dubbed “Hopping Talley.” The influence of both artists is felt by those who immediately succeeded them. The coarseness, for instance, of Robert Cruikshank, when he displays any at all, which is seldom, is directly traceable to the influence of Rowlandson, whom (until he followed the example of his greater brother) he at first copied.
Gillray wrought much the same influence upon George Cruikshank. Influence of Gillray on Cruikshank. I have seen it gravely asserted by some of those who have written upon him,2 that this great artist never executed a drawing which could call a blush into the cheek of modesty. But those who have written upon George Cruikshank—and their name is legion—instead of beginning at the beginning, and thus tracing the gradual and almost insensible formation of his style, appear to me to have plunged as it were into medias res, and commenced at the point when he dropped caricature and became an illustrator of books. Book illustration was scarcely an art until George Cruikshank made it so; and the most interesting period of his artistic career appears to us to be the one in which he pursued the path indicated by James Gillray, until his career of caricaturist merged into his later employment of a designer and etcher of book illustration, by which no doubt he achieved his reputation. In answer to those who tell us that he never produced a drawing which could call a blush into the