Part 1 (2/2)

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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._]

CHANGE IN THE SPIRIT OF ENGLISH CARICATURE.

Since the commencement of the present century, and more 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; was.h.i.+ng 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 G.o.ds and men. Reader, be a.s.sured that the fat men who figure in the graphic satires of the early part of the century were certainly _not_ caricatured.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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._]

THE THREE GREAT CARICATURISTS OF THE LAST CENTURY.

In connection with the subject of graphic satire, the names of the 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 coa.r.s.e 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 distinguis.h.i.+ng characteristics are carelessness and often bad drawing, follows him at a respectful distance. The genius of James Gillray has won him the t.i.tle of the ”Prince of Caricaturists,” a t.i.tle 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 coa.r.s.eness and vulgarity of their century. With Gillray, indeed, this coa.r.s.eness 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 coa.r.s.e 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 coa.r.s.eness, 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.

INFLUENCE OF GILLRAY ON CRUIKSHANK.

Gillray wrought much the same influence upon George Cruikshank. I have seen it gravely a.s.serted 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 ill.u.s.trator of books. Book ill.u.s.tration 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 ill.u.s.tration, 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 cheek of modesty, and never raised a laugh at the expense of decency, we will only say that we can produce at least a score of instances to the contrary. To go no further than ”The Scourge,” we will refer them to three: his _Dinner of the Four-in-Hand Club at Salthill_, in vol. i.; his _Return to Office_ (1st July, 1811), in vol. ii.; and his _Coronation of the Empress of the Nares_ (1st September, 1812), in vol.

iv.

REVOLUTION EFFECTED BY H. B.

As the century pa.s.sed out of its infancy and attained the maturer age of thirty years, a gradual and almost imperceptible change came over the spirit of English graphic satire. The coa.r.s.eness and suggestiveness of the old caricaturists gradually disappeared, until at length, in 1830, an artist arose who was destined to work a complete revolution in the style and manner of English caricature. This artist was John Doyle,--the celebrated H. B. He it was that discovered that pictures might be made mildly diverting without actual coa.r.s.eness or exaggeration; and when this fact was accepted, the art of caricaturing underwent a complete transition, and a.s.sumed a new form. The ”Sketches” of H. B. owe their chief attraction to the excellence of their designer as a portrait painter; his successors, with less power in this direction but with better general artistic abilities, rapidly improved upon his idea, and thus was founded the modern school of graphic satirists represented by Richard Doyle, John Leech, and John Tenniel. So completely was the style of comic art changed under the auspices of these clever men, that the very name of ”caricature” disappeared, and the modern word ”cartoon”

a.s.sumed its place. With the exception indeed of Carlo Pellegrini (the ”Ape” of _Vanity Fair_), and his successors, we have now no caricaturist in the old and true acceptation of the term, and original and clever as their productions are, their compositions are timid compared with those of Bunbury, Gillray, Rowlandson, and their successors, being limited to a weekly ”exaggerated” portrait, instead of composed of many figures.

[Ill.u.s.tration: JAMES GILLRAY. _May 14th, 1799._

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