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GILLRAY, ROWLANDSON, AND BUNBURY.

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CARICATURISTS

OF THE LAST CENTURY.

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 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

INFLUENCE

OF GILLRAY ON
CRUIKSHANK.

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. I have seen it gravely asserted by some of those who have written upon him,* 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 cali 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.

As the century passed out of its infancy and attained the maturer age of thirty years, a gradual and almost imperceptible change came

One quotation shall suffice. Mr. William Bates tells us in his admirable "Maclise Portrait Gallery ":" He never transgressed the narrow line that separates wit from buffoonery, pandered to sensuality, glorified vice or raised a laugh at the expense of decency. Satire never in his hands degenerated into savagery or scurrility. A moral purpose ever underlaid his humour; he sought to instruct or improve when he amused." Mr. Bates will, we hope, pardon us if we say that this is not quite the fact. George Cruikshank in truth was no better or worse than his satirical brothers, and his tone necessarily improved from the moment he took to illustrating books,

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ORIGIN OF MODERN SCHOOL OF GRAPHIC SATIRE.

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REVOLUTION EFFECTED BY H. B.

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over the spirit of English graphic satire. The coarseness and sug-
gestiveness 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 John Doyle
actual coarseness or exaggeration; and when this fact was accepted,
the art of caricaturing underwent a complete transition, and assumed
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" assumed 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.

But caricature was destined to receive its final blow at the
hands of that useful craftsman the wood-engraver. The application
of wood-engraving to all kinds of illustration, whether graphic or
comic, and the mode in which time, labour, and expense are
economised, by the large wood blocks being cut up into squares,
and each square entrusted to the hands of a separate workman,
has virtually superseded the old and far more effective process
of etching. Economy is now the order of the day in matters of
graphic satire as in everything else; people are no longer found
willing to pay a shilling for a caricature when they may obtain
one for a penny. Hence it has come to pass, that whilst comic

artists abound, the prevailing spirit of economy has reduced their

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