The Print Shop Window

Reappraising The Wright Mode of Kicking Up

2012-03-06T03:39:00.001-08:00

The two-part biography of the Anglo-American caricaturist William Charles that appeared on The Print Shop Window a couple of weeks ago focused upon the subject of American political caricature during the War of 1812. In this post we’ll look at a print by another American caricaturist that touches upon the subject of that war but it is an image which is far less well-known and one whose history is somewhat incomplete.

A Bug-a-boo to Frighten John Bull, or the Wright Mode for Kicking Up was produced by James Aiken, an American printmaker whose talent as a satirist arguably exceeded those of the more famous Charles but who has remained something of an obscurity because of a sympathy with the Federalist cause that perhaps put him at odds with subsequent generations of patriotic American historians. This is a shame because Aiken was clearly both a clever and creative satirist and a technically skilled draughtsman, with a style that is reminiscent of the prolific British caricaturist Charles Williams. Indeed, Aiken's talents were such that it is possible that he was the only American caricaturist who was capable of selling prints and designs in England during the early Nineteenth Century [1].

The British Museum Catalogue describes A Bug-a-boo to Frighten John Bull... as follows;

Apparently an American print. In the foreground is an American merchantman, the poop towards the spectator and crowded with men of un-nautical appearance; she is inscribed 'Wright of Maryland'. A few yards off is a naval ship's boat inscribed 'Revenge' in which a British officer, wearing a large cocked hat, stands, cutlass in hand, holding the tiller. There are six oarsmen. A man on the American vessel tipsily fires a pistol at the boat; the officer shouts: "I'll have you tuck'd up at the yard Arm, you rascal for daring to fire upon His Majestys barge." The man answers: "Damn you Majesty & your furbillo'd hat." One of the sailors, apparently hit, hangs lifeless over the edge of the boat. One American seaman swims towards the British boat, saying, "60$ a month is worth a wet Jacket any time"; a sailor prepares to help him in, saying, "Give us your fist my brave fellow you were rather too nimble for us". Two of the other British sailors say: "Dont be firing here & be D------d to you" and "I wish we had a Congress to Hansel us ye Dollars". An American seaman is about to drop overboard; he says to the British sailors: "Bear a hand shipmates or I'll be swamp'd too." Behind him are a Negro and an Irishman; the former says: "Ki massa I grad fo go long you my nooung massa been read say inney paper massa Wright gwine gie me 200 Dollah." The Irishman says: "Bie my sowl I'll go wid ye for 60 dollarhs a munt." One seaman seizes another, saying, "you shant go Nat sister Nabby will cry dreadfully if you be not to home." The man pushes him off, saying, "Leave me be Ned our marchents wunt give me 60$ wages." A third (with deformed hands) brandishes a saucepan, saying, "Rascals", while a fourth says to him: "I say Old crooked knuckles why heave the skillet overboard?" On the extreme right the master of the vessel looks towards the British boat, saying, "You'd best make no difficulty with my people, for there's a bill before Congress, to shoot every Englishman at 200$ pr head." The sails form a background to the men. In the middle distance is a British man-of-war to which the barge belongs. Behind is a harbour with vessels at anchor, backed by the houses of a small port; behind are cliffs surmounted by a castle flying a British flag. c.1806

In addition the following note has been added to the online catalogue;

The date being uncertain the situation is obscure. 'Wright' is probably Robert Wright (1752-1826), senator, and Governor of Maryland, a strong Jeffersonian, who introduced a Bill in 1806 for the protection and indemnification of American seamen, and supported measures for the protection of American commerce and the prosecution of the War of 1812 with Great Britain. Desertion for higher pay was in general from British to American ships. The tension between the two countries was great and increased until the outbreak of war.

This description is partially correct but it’s possible, with a little research, to come up with a much more comprehensive explanation of the meaning of this print.

The print refers to the dispute which arose between Britain and the United States over the British practice of press-ganging sailors from aboard American vessels during the Napoleonic Wars. Although the British claimed that they were only ever seeking to recover British sailors who were lawfully obliged to serve in the Royal Navy during wartime, in practice the policy of impressment inevitably led to many hundreds of American sailors being wrongfully seized and forcibly conscripted into the British fleet. The whole issue was made even more complex by the fact that the American merchant fleet had become a haven for those who had deserted the Royal Navy and that American consular officials and merchant captains often connived to provide British runaways with papers of American citizenship. Eventually the issue was to become one of the main casus belli underpinning the United States deceleration of war against Great Britain in June 1812.

In 1806 a hawkish Republican senator named Robert Wright came up with his own radical solution to the problem of impressment. Wright brought a bill ‘for the protection and indemnification of American seamen' before Congress in January of that year which aimed at encouraging American sailors to use force in order to repel British boarding parties who were attempting to stop and search US ships. The bill contained clauses which would have granted legal immunity and a $200 bounty to captain's who repelled British boarding parties attempting to search American vessels and promised that any American sailor who was wrongfully pressed into British service would receive $60 a month in compensation from the US government.

Aiken's print reflects the view of Federalist opponents of the bill, who argued that large compensation payments and bounties would simply reverse the flow of deserters moving between the British and American fleets and encourage American captain's to engage in provocative behaviour that would end in all-out war with Great Britain. That is why the print depicts a rather preposterous scene in which the ragtag crew of the Wright of Maryland seem torn between the suicidal desire to engage a heavily armed British frigate in combat and to leap overboard be pressed into the Royal Navy and claim their $60 a month compensation.

The presence of the skillet-wielding figure on the poop-deck of the American vessel can also be used to date the publication of this print to 1806 as this character appears in a number of prints Aiken produced in that year.

It's a caricature of Edmund M. Blunt, a publisher of Newburyport Massachusetts with whom Aiken had quarrelled over unpaid debts and who was mocked mercilessly by the satirist in a number of prints published during late 1805 and early 1806. In all of these prints Blunt was drawn with the same grimacing expression, crooked fingers and was always waving a cooking pot over his head - a reference to an incident which occurred on October 27th 1804 when the infuriated Blunt tried to hurl a cast iron skillet at Aiken during an argument.

James Aiken, Infuriated Despondency!, c.1805

It's possible that A Bug-a-boo to Frighten John Bull... was one of the last caricature prints Aiken produced before he left Newburyport in October 1807 and returned to his native Philadelphia. He certainly is not known to have produced any more caricatures featuring Blunt after this period and by 1808 he appears to have begun another equally caustic feud with a Philadelphia bookseller called Richard Folwell, who replaced Blunt at the chief target of Aiken's satirical invective. This therefore gives us a further indication that the print was almost certainly produced in 1806.

Aiken appears to have abandoned caricature and printmaking altogether between 1811 and 1819 and he disappears entirely from the Philadelphia trade directory during this period. This is a shame because one can imagine that the combination of Aiken's acidic wit and ardent Federalism could have resulted in him producing some fascinatingly unconventional satires during the War of 1812.

[1]. A Bug-a-boo to Frighten John Bull... was one of the few American prints from this period to be found amongst the collection Edward Hawkins (1780 - 1868) in London and it is also claimed that Akien's Infuriated Despondency! was transfer printed onto Liverpool creamware in England. See F.B. Sanborn, 'Thomas Leavitt and his Artist Friend, James Aiken' Granite Monthly 25, No. 10, pp. 226 - 227.

An Old Performer Playing on a New Instrument... c.1810

2012-02-27T12:35:00.000-08:00

Here is another nice piece of caricature-related pottery that I came across whilst mooching around a local auction house a couple of weeks ago.

It’s an English creamware jug decorated with a version of S.W. Fores caricature An old performer playing on a new instrument or one of the 42d touching the invincible. The original print was published in 1803 to commemorate the British victory over the French at the Battle of Alexandria in 1801. The turning point of the battle had come when the men of 42^nd Highland Regiment routed a force of French cavalry who were reputedly nicknamed ‘the invincibles’ and the print celebrates this by depicting a highlander using a distressed looking Napoleon as a bagpipe and forcing the Emperor to play the tune of ‘God Save Great George Our King’.

The design was a popular one and was reproduced on both jugs and drinking mugs throughout the Napoleonic Wars. The Spode pottery factory in Staffordshire produced several nice versions and even added to Fores original design by including the full text to the first verse of the British national anthem and a new additional verse which specifically referred to Napoleon’s defeat in the Egyptian campaign:

He fell in love with Egypt once, because it was the high road

To India for himself and friends to travel by a nigh road

And after making mighty fuss and fighting day and night there

T’was monstrous ungenteel of us who would not let him stay there

The example shown here appears to be a rather inferior copy of Spode’s design. The quality of the pottery itself isn’t that amazing and the print has been roughly engraved and hastily over-washed with colour. On the reverse the potter has added a second image of a highlander marching a French officer off at bayonet point, under the title One of the 71^st Taking a French Office Prisoner in Portugal. This design appeared on a number of similar creamware jugs of this type from 1809 until 1815 and it is likely that this particular jug was also produced by the same unidentified potter.

William Davison (1781 - 1858)

2012-02-24T06:05:00.002-08:00

I mentioned in an earlier post that I think the recent monographic histories of the ‘golden age of British caricature’ have tended to overlook the subject of the provincial print trade. To some extent this oversight is understandable – During the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century the print shops in the West End of London produced caricature prints of a quality and in a quantity that was without parallel anywhere in Europe, let alone Britain, and as such their dominance of the written history of the genre seems fairly inevitable. Nevertheless I think it’s also important to recognise that London did not hold a monopoly on the production of graphic satire and that ordinary Britons would have had far more exposure to the prints produced by their local journeyman printer than they would to the exclusive products of the London shops. To that end I’ve decided to try and write a number of biographies of noteworthy provincial printers which should hopefully serve to provide some indication of the kinds of caricatures and prints that were in circulation across Britain during the Georgian era.

The Politician, c. 1812-17 after an original design by Hogarth

One notable caricaturist to emerge in the North of England during the early 1800s was William Davison of the small market town of Alnwick in Northumberland. Davison was the son of a local farmer who, after spending several years serving as an apprentice to a local chemist, established his own pharmacy business in the town in 1802. It’s not clear exactly why or how Davison became involved in the print trade but it’s possible that his interest in printing evolved out of a decision to expand his business beyond traditional chemists’ lines and begin stocking stationary and books. An advertisement for Davison’s shop that was placed in the Newcastle Courant of 1804 indicates that, in addition to the usual tinctures and ointments, he also stocked books, paper, drawing materials and musical instruments and it appears as if he eventually decided to begin publishing books on his own account. His first serious introduction to the publishing trade probably came through an acquaintance with a local stationer names John Catnach. Catnach was an itinerant Scottish printer who had set up a small print shop in Alnwick in 1790 but his business was beset by financial difficulties and it seems likely that this eventually drove him into a business partnership with Davison. During 1807 and 1808 the pair published a number of illustrated chapbooks and volumes of poetry under the title of Davison & Catnach. What little written evidence of the partnership survives indicates that Davison’s role was primarily that of financier whilst Catnach provided contacts with local engravers and technical expertise. Evidently this arrangement ultimately proved to be unsatisfactory to one or both of the parties concerned because the partnership appears to have been dissolved within a year and Catnach relocated to Newcastle to leave Davison publishing under his own account.

Druid and Highlander, c.1812-1817. A fairly bog-standard satire on quack doctors

The Gout, c.1812-1817

Spaniard Lousing, c.1812-1817. A rather crude caricature which depicts a louse-ridden Spaniard scratching himself. It is highly unlikely that either Davison or his audience ever set eyes upon an actual Spaniard and it is probable that his strange dress in the print is meant to further accentuate his foreignness.

Davison came into printing at opportune moment. The beginning of the nineteenth century saw a great rise in demand for almost all forms of popular printing across the North of England and Scotland and Davison appears to have fully exploited this opportunity. Between 1808 and 1815 the publishing side of his business diversified into the production of satirical prints, chapbooks, children’s books, school text books, billheads and commercial printing, newspaper publication and guidebooks, as well as providing illustrations for a wide range of other books and pamphlets. By the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 Davison had adopted stereotype printing as a means of keeping up with demand and was regularly commissioning works from the celebrated Newcastle wood-engraver Thomas Bewick. This level of output seems particularly impressive when one considers that he also remained an active pharmacist and apothecary throughout his career.

The Old Maids' Petition, c.1812 -1817.

During his lifetime Davison is known to have produced some forty two separate copperplate engraved caricature prints. His style of drawing is reminiscent of that of Henry Bunbury whilst the execution of the engraving and particularly the use of bold parallel lines and vigorous cross-hatching to denote interior scenes, is very similar to that of Matthew and Mary Darly. Typically Davison’s caricatures were produced from 9 x 6½ inch copperplates and printed in black onto wove paper but it is also possible to find versions of some designs in red ink and with hand colouring. His career as a caricaturist also seems to have been relatively short-lived, as the caricature prints held in both the Newcastle University and British Museum collections all carry watermarks from between 1812 and 1817. The exact reasons for this are not known but it’s possible that Davison diversified into caricature during these economically turbulent years in order to compensate for a drop-off in orders for more expensive illustrated books.

Out of Place and Unpension'd, c.1812 - 1817. After an original design by Robert Dighton.

Slight of Hand by a Monkey or the Lady's Head Unloaded, c.1812-1817. After an original design by Carrington Bowles

London Sportsmen Marking Game, c. 1812-1817. After Gillray

The subject matter of Davison’s caricatures was uncomplicated and reflected the relatively unsophisticated states of his audience. His original compositions relied heavily upon well-worn themes within Georgian humour such as the comic exploitation of clergymen, quack doctors and foreigners, which would have been familiar to even the most uneducated viewer. In addition to this Davison also copied a number of older designs by Hogarth, Gillray, Carrington Bowles and Dighton.
Political subjects are almost totally absent from Davison’s caricatures and I have only been able to find two examples of prints that may have had even a vaguely political subtext. The first of these is an image entitled Economy showing a ragged father and son walking towards a coaching inn. The example of this design found in the University of Newcastle collection was printed on paper watermarked 1816 and it’s possible that this print refers to the post-war economic slump that hit Britain in that year. The second is an untitled image of a Highlander and an American Indian published in 1815 which may relate to the War of 1812.

Economy, 1816

Untitled, 1815. It's possible that this print has some relevance to the War of 1812 but the exact meaning of the print is unclear.

Davison stopped printing caricatures in 1817 but remained active in the publishing trade until his death in 1858. Whilst his prints may not be amongst the most visually or intellectually stimulating examples of graphic satire produced during the 'golden age of British caricature', they provide us with an interesting insight into the nature of the print trade outside London and the tastes of provincial audiences.

The Bank Restriction Barometer - Georgian Skit Notes

2012-02-19T07:59:00.000-08:00

Imitation banknotes, called ‘skit notes’, carrying satirical or humorous designs were one of the many interesting sidelines of printed ephemera produced by the print shops of Georgian England.

The appearance of skit notes in England during the mid-1790s coincided with a massive expansion in the volume of paper currency in circulation. Wartime gold shortages forced the Pitt Ministry to embark on a series of unpopular expansionary fiscal policies that led to rising inflation and provoked several serious bank-runs. The original purpose of early skit notes may therefore have been to act, either directly or indirectly, as a satirical comment on the perceived weaknesses of paper money itself. The content of some early skit notes certainly seems to suggest this was the case, as designs tended to flout the perceived instability and low value of banknotes. For example, the note shown below boasts that the laughably small sum of two pence can be redeemed upon “the conquest of France and establishment of royalty”, a prospect which would have seemed extremely remote when the note was printed in August 1795.

A skit note printed in August 1795 which promises that the bearer is entitled to redeem the sum of two pence upon the conquest of France the re-establishment of royalty. The image at the top left of the note is of John Bull carrying a large sack marked 'taxes' whilst saying 'God Save the King'.

George Cruikshank’s Bank Restriction Note is probably the most well-known example of the skit note’s use as a medium for political satire. The Note was produced in conjunction with the radical publisher William Hone and was originally packaged inside a separate illustrated satirical handbill entitled The Bank Barometer. Together, the two pieces were intended to satirise both the inflationary economic policies of Lord Liverpool’s Tory administration and legislation which made the use of forged banknotes a capital offence. Cruikshank would later claim that the idea for the Note came to him after he witnessed the public hanging of two elderly women who had inadvertently used forged notes to buy food. The design itself is visually arresting and proved to be hugely successful. Cruikshank recalled that “when it appeared in shop windows, it created such a great sensation and people gathered round [William Hone’s] house in such numbers that the Lord Mayor had to send the City police... to disperse the crowd.” Hone was reported to have made several hundred pounds from the sale of the Note and demand for it was such that Cruikshank was forced to work through the night on a number of occasions in order to ensure that the worn-out copperplates carrying the design were replaced in time to resume printing the next morning.

George Cruikshank, Bank Restriction Note, January 1819

Hone & Cruikshank, Bank Restriction Barometer, January 1819
Copies of the Bank Restriction Note were sold wrapped inside this large illustrated broadside designed by William Hone.

The Note’s success prompted the loyalist publisher Samuel Knight to issue a skit note of his own which aped Cruikshank’s design but which promised to pay “all republicans and knaves the sum of perpetual flagellation” and showed Hone, William Cobbett and Henry Hunt being whipped through the streets by the public hangman. Knight, who owned a print shop in Sweetings Ally was a commercial rival and ideological opponent of William Hone. He produced a number of loyalist imitations of Hone’s famous The Political House that Jack Built and peddled a lucrative line in conservative counter-satires which attempted to skewer rabble-rousing radical publishers and politicians. The inventiveness of the design and the quality of the engraving in Knight’s House of Correction is every bit equal to the Bank Restriction Note and indeed, as Cruikshank was retained by Knight at this time and is also known to have taken commissions to provide loyalist ripostes to his own designs for Hone, it is perfectly possible that this note was also produced by George Cruikshank.

Cruikshank (?), House of Correction 1819, January 1819

Further examples of political skit notes can also be found relating to a number of other subjects, including the Battle of the Nile in 1797, the Act of Union between Ireland and Great Britain in 1801, the bombardment of Copenhagen in 1807 and the Burdett Riots of 1810.

Anti-Pitt Note 1806, Promises to pay the bearer upon the "erection of a statue of the late Heaven-born Minister, composed of Pure Puff Paste, or Papier Machee, or Calf's Head Jelly..." The design to the left shows a gallows and an axe and is surrounded with the legend "We restore liberty and stand amongst the best correctives for baseness".

Copenhagen Note 1807, "Promise to pay to Messrs Public Justice & Virtue, or Bearer, Five Danish Skillings when the Diabolical Massacre and Robbery of the Danes shall have been properly atoned for" The coat of arms shown in top left corner of the print contains imagery which compares the actions of the Royal Navy with those of the Algerian pirates the terrorised merchant shipping in the Medeterranean.

Sand Hill & Somerset Bank, 1810. A pro-Burdett skit note. The majority of surviving political notes represent extreme Whig or radical political views and this may be because the concept of subverting banknotes with satirical messages held a particular appeal to those who had set themselves against the established political order.

A number of humorous designs were also produced for sale but these are much rarer than notes dealing with political subjects. The first example shown below claims to have been issued by the “Emitic Court Bank Dublin” and carries a picture of man vomiting copiously into a bucket, whilst the second carries an image of man having his teeth removed and carries the signature of “Sir Wm Dentist-Hellbore”.

Emitic Court Bank Dublin, 1794

Woodmancoat Bank Glocestershire, 1796

Although skit notes remained in production until the mid-twentieth century, I have been unable to find any examples of notes carrying political designs that postdate 1820. It is possible that the economic boom of the 1820s and the final removal of Pitt’s war-related currency restrictions in 1832 undermined the skit note’s utility as a medium for political satire. The majority of notes produced during the late Hanoverian and early Victorian eras used instead as novelty forms of advertising and a selection of examples of this type of skit note can be found below.

Bank of Wigs, 1806, Advertisement for a hairdresser and wig-makers shop

An 1803 skit note for the print-seller Rudolph Ackermann's Repository of Arts in the Strand. The inscription reads "I promise to pay on demand the sum of ONE HUNDRED POUNDS, more or less, for any fine drawings, or execute orders for prints, drawings, ornaments &c. & deliver them with expedition to any part of the world."

Bank of Beauty and Elegance, 1822. "A. Gardener will Cut, Dress & Arrange, any Lady or Gentleman's Hair in a superior style or forfeit the sum of One Thousand Pounds.

An Awful Warning to Blasphemers, c.1830

2012-02-10T08:19:00.000-08:00

Drinking, reading and swearing - The three roads to damnation according this handbill from the early 1830s.

I’m currently trying to do a little reading on the subject of the provincial trade in graphic satire during the so-called ‘golden age’ of British caricature. It’s an interesting subject but one that’s been almost completely overlooked by modern historians of Georgian satire, who still tend to focus exclusively on London and the fashionable print shops of the West End. Although I enjoy reading these books immensely, I have to wonder whether writing a book about Georgian caricatures which only concerns itself with the exclusive London shops is akin to writing a history of the motorcar which only features cars by Mercedes and Ferrari? The prints produced by the likes of Gillray and Cruikshank were simply not available to the vast majority of Britons and if ordinary people had any exposure to satirical images at all then it must have come from the vast array of cheap prints, illustrated song-sheets and broadsides, which were churned out by two-bit publishers operating in provincial towns and cities up and down the country.

Illustrated handbills such as the one shown above had been a staple product of English provincial printing presses since the mid-1640s. The subject matter usually fell into one of three broad categories – lurid accounts of murders, stories about supernatural events, or finger-wagging morality tales which were designed to keep working class readers on the straight-and-narrow. This example is a religious handbill which was produced just outside Plymouth at some time during the early 1830s, possibly by someone associated with a local evangelical sect known as the Plymouth Brethren. It features a large woodcut engraved copy of Hogath’s Gin Lane which is crudely coloured with vivid shades of red and yellow. It is reproduced here in full for the benefit of anyone who was thinking of visiting their local pub later this evening…

The terrible judgement of GOD manifested on six profane young men, at Brodney, in Somersetshire; who through reading seditious and blasphemous books, became converts to Infidelity, and, in the height of their Impiety, went into the churchyard at midnight and made the horrible attempt of taking the Blessed Sacrament in the name of Satan, when the hand of heaven stopped them in the midst of their hellish wickedness.

At Brodney, in Somersetshire, lived the following personages, viz., John Williams, Henry Crosby, Stephen Newel, William Jefferies, Joseph Thomas and Robert Lawson, six wicked and blasphemous young men, whose parents lived very well in the world, and took pains to educate them all in godliness and sobriety; but they gave themselves up to wild courses of life and followed all manner of wickedness, particularly in swearing and blaspheming the name of the most High God. They had, by an habitual course of wickedness, so hardened themselves that they taught themselves to believe that there was neither God nor Devil. And when they heard their parents talk of receiving the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, they said they did not believe it signified anything, and that it might as well be received in the name of the Devil, as in the blessed name of God, since they did not believe there was neither one or the other.

But not long they continued in this wicked course of life before the vengeance of the Almighty overtook them in their career – for one night last week, as they were all drinking together at the sign of the Angel, in the said town, where they continued swearing and drinking till midnight and being much intoxicated with liquor and mad with wickedness, they conceived the horrid idea of carrying bread and wine into the churchyard and there to take the sacrament in the cursed name of the Devil, when a loud and distinct voice pronounced these words:

“Oh ye wicked and blasphemous young men! Stop your hands and proceed no further in your wicked and desperate designs. Consider there is a just and terrible God above who will send down his judgements upon you! Go therefore – turn and repent before it be too late.”

Though they all distinctly heard the voice, yet they paid not the least regard to it, but went on with their wicked design. No sooner had they begun but there was heard the most astonishing cries and bellowings, accompanied with dismal groans to melt a heart of stone, which struck a dreadful surprise to the Rev. Mr Simmons and his family who lived near the churchyard, that they could not lie in their beds. When Mr Simmons got up to see what was the matter he could see the bread and wine but none of the people. Unable to guess what had occasioned the extraordinary noise, he went to bed again.

Early next morning Mr Simmons and his family went into the churchyard again, where they saw John Williams and William Crosby laying behind the churchyard wall, in a most deplorable condition, with blood running out of their mouths and ears.

Stephen Newel, William Jefferies, Joseph Thomas and Robert Lawson, were found in different parts of the field adjoining the churchyard, in the like miserable condition, to the great grief of their parents.

This remarkable and just judgement, we hope will be a warning to all wicked persons; - the truth whereof may be attested by several people of good repute, who have desired that this affair might be printed and made public for the use of and benefit of the rising generation.

The print shop window on trial - Richard Carlile and The Props of the Church

2012-02-07T04:18:00.000-08:00

The frontispiece to the Scourge of Saturday 29th November 1834 featured a woodcut engraving showing the front of Carlile's shop at 62 Fleet Street with the controversial caricature displays mounted in the upper windows.

Looking back on his schooldays William Makepeace Thackeray fondly recalled the numerous hours he spent gazing up at the window displays of London’s print shops;

“Knight’s in Sweeting’s Ally; Fairburn’s in a court off Ludgate Hill; Hone’s in Fleet Street – bright, enchanted palaces ... How we used... to stray miles out of the way on holidays in order to ponder for an hour before that delightful window... There used to be a crowd round the window in those days of grinning, good-natured mechanics, who spelt the songs and spoke them out for the benefit of the company, and who received the points of humour with a general sympathizing roar.”

For Thackeray and many others, the admiring crowds which assembled on the pavements outside print shops were a feature of London’s cultural topography which deserved to be remembered and celebrated – Evidence of an unparalleled commercial and social vibrancy which could be enjoyed by all Englishmen. A German visitor in London during 1806 echoed the young Thackeray’s sentiments when he marvelled that “The English, of high and low birth alike are so enamoured of these satires that... caricature shops are always besieged by the public.”

However there were many residents of London who took a far less rosy view of the crowds which habitually gathered on the pavement outside print shops. The playwright Oliver Goldsmith complained that such groups were little more than a collection of “quacks, pimps, and buffoons… and [that] noted stallions only made room for more noted strumpets”. An analysis of the records held by London’s courts supports Goldsmith’s assessment, indicating that thieves and pickpockets were able to find rich pickings amongst crowds which gathered to admire the latest caricatures. Those of a more conservative inclination went further in their condemnation; looking on the prospect of mobs of people gathering in the streets to laugh at caricatures of their betters with something close to a sense of horror.

Attitudes such as these perhaps explain why the authorities took the extraordinary step of arresting the print and bookseller Richard Carlile in the autumn of 1834. Carlile was a well-known radical, a friend and associate of Henry Hunt and a man who had already served several jail terms on charges relating to the publication of seditious, blasphemous and libellous material. In October of 1834 his shop in the Fleet Street was raided by police after the publisher refused to pay church rates for the property. Carlile retaliated by having two life-sized anti-clerical caricatures mounted in the first floor window of the shop. The first depicted a stereotypical image of a greedy pawnbroker and was labelled Temporal Broker, whilst the second consisted of a bishop cavorting arm-in-arm with Satan under the title Spiritual Broker. A title of, The Props of the Church was also painted across the front of the shop.

Inevitably the decision to mount an abnormally large and deliberately provocative caricature 20 feet above one of London's busiest thoroughfares resulted a huge crowds congregating in Fleet Street . The various witnesses who appeared at Carlile’s trial claimed that groups of at least 40-50 people were perpetually gathered on both sides of the street near Carlile’s shop, that omnibuses and coaches blocked the road as drivers slowed down to look up at the effigies and that, worst of all, respectable ladies were being forced to take refuge in nearby shops for fear of being hooted at and jostled by the crowds. One of the policemen who appeared at the trial reported that “I have lived in London all my life - I never saw a crowd of people congregate at a shop window in that way in my life - I never saw a caricature shop window as bad as that.”

Buried under a sea of complaints from local shopkeepers and outraged members of the middle classes, the civic authorities felt compelled to act but were unsure of how to proceed against the radical publisher. Whilst action had been taken to clear crowds from outside print shops in the past – in 1828 the police and local magistrates had been called to clear a large mob from outside G.S. Tregear’s shop in Cheapside – this would not result in the removal of the offensive caricature from Carlile’s window. On the other hand the authorities could not simply take action against the content of the caricature because it was notoriously difficult to bring a charge of seditious libel against someone for publishing an image. In April 1812 the British government had considered taking legal action against the publishers of The Scourge but had abandoned the idea when the Solicitor General advised that a caricature “would require so much of difficult explanation in stating it as a libel that it does not appear to us advisable to make it the subject of criminal prosecution”.

Carlile’s prosecutors adopted a new line of attack – claiming that the publisher had created a public nuisance by drawing such huge crowds to the front of his shop. A series of outraged shopkeepers were called to appear before the court and testify that the presence of these crowds, which usually consisted of “the lowest of the low”, had resulted in thefts, damage to property and a sharp decline in the number of ‘respectable’ customers visiting their establishments. Carlile chose to conduct his own defence, arguing that the crowd was “no greater than a congregation leaving church – a funeral, or other processions” which frequently occurred on London’s streets and that the authorities had already fined him £5 for displaying a similarly offensive print several months earlier and therefore he could not be tried for the same crime again. He concluded by warning the court that any fine levied against him could only be paid through the sale of yet more political tracts and prints and that whilst he was “anxious to live in peace and amity with all men… there do exist many political and moral evils which this deponent will, through life, labour to abate.”

He was found guilty and, after refusing to pay sureties of £200 for the good behaviour of himself and two of his employees, was sentenced to three years imprisonment for creating a public nuisance. After the sentence Carlile scoffed at the idea of handing money over to the authorities; “It is a mockery to say that I may, if I please, purchase my liberty. I cannot do it… I will not interfere to abate one hour of the imprisonment. When the gates are open to me I will walk out, but I will not pay or do anything to procure release” He also added that he would rather “be free in prison than shackled outside."

Further reading

A transcript of Carlile’s trial in November 1834 can be found at;

http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?id=def1-155-18341124&div=t18341124-155#highlight

G.A. Aldred, Richard Carlile: His Battle for the Free Press, London, 1912 and Richard Carlile, Agitator: His Life and Times, London 1923

The Celebrated Fire Proof Female, c.1816

2012-01-31T08:07:00.000-08:00

Charles Williams, Madame Giradelli - The Celebrated Fire Proof Female, London, 1818 (BM Collection)

Senora Josephine Giradelli was a female fire-eater who became a passing sensation in Georgian England between the years 1816 and 1818. Although fire-eating acts of one kind or another were an established feature of English fairs and sideshows, the prospect of watching a woman perform such seemingly dangerous feats was daringly unconventional for the time. A correspondent of the Manchester Iris, who saw Girardelli’s act, breathlessly informed his readers that

“She will, without the least symptom of pain, put boiling melting lead into her mouth, and emit the same, with the imprint of her teeth thereon; red hot irons will be passed over various parts of her body – will walk over a bar of red-hot iron with her naked feet – wash her hands with aqua fortis – and put boiling oil into her mouth.”

Giradelli was a protégé of the famous showman John Richardson (1766 – 1836), a huckster whose travelling ‘theatre’ of oddities and trashy one-act plays was a central feature of the riotous summer fairs of Regency London. The young Charles Dickens, who watched one of Richardson’s later performances, recalled the experience of visiting “immense booth, with the large stage in front, so brightly illuminated with variegated lamps, and pots of burning fat… where you have a melodrama (with three murders and a ghost), a pantomime, a comic song, an overture, and some incidental music, all done in five-and-twenty minutes”. Richardson introduced Giradelli to the stage in Portsmouth in the summer of 1816 and on the basis of a series of sold-out shows, immediately booked her to appear at Lawson’s theatre on New Bond Street, London.

The London print shops were also quick to capitalise on Giradelli’s fifteen minutes of fame. By far the most impressive print to feature her was drawn and engraved by Charles Williams and shows her onstage wearing a costume which consists of a short dress and frilly pantaloons. She serenely holds one hand over a burning brazier and brandishes a red-hot iron in the other whilst resting her foot on a burning slab of stone. A vat of molten lead and a jug of boiling oil also stand ready behind her.

As Harry Houdini was once observed of Giradelli; “this lady displayed a taste for hot meals which would seem to recommend her as a matrimonial venture”.

Thomas Rowlandson, Richardson's Theatre at Greenwich Fair, Ink and watercolour, c.1811-1816 (Private collection)

C.J. Grant, Burnt Out & No Mistake, 1834

2012-01-29T08:32:00.002-08:00

G. Tregear, The Destruction of the House of Lords & Commons by Fire, 1834
A lithographed view of the fire taken from the south bank of the Thames to the east of Westminster Bridge.

The unpopularity of politicians is possibly the one consistent theme to emerge from the last 200 years of British political history. This has perhaps been at no time more apparent than on the evening of 16^th October 1834, when a large crowd gathered at Westminster in order to cheer on a massive fire which was ripping its way through the heart of the Houses of Parliament.

The fire, which was the largest conflagration London had witnessed since the Great Fire of 1666, had been inadvertently started earlier that day by a pair of workmen who were carelessly burning large piles of wooden tally sticks in an old furnace under the House of Lords. By the afternoon, the housekeeper, Mrs Wright, complained that smoke had filled the Lords. Other witnesses said they could feel the heat through the soles of their boots whilst in the chamber. By 6pm the fire had broken out and was spreading rapidly through the muddle of medieval and later wooden building which made up the old Houses of Parliament. In a matter of hours the centuries-old seat of British government was consumed. St Stephen's Chapel, home of the old House of Commons, graced by Pitt and Fox, Walpole and Pym, was scorched back to its medieval skeleton. The Lords, with its Elizabethan tapestries depicting the defeat of the Spanish Armada, was reduced to rubble and soot. The intensity of the blaze was such that it caused the medieval stained glass windows of St Stephen’s to explode and the dull orange glow of the flames could be seen on the horizon in the North Downs, some 70 miles away.

As news of the fire spread crowds surged into Westminster and lined the bank of the Thames opposite Parliament. Many of the observers must have taken in the scene unfolding before them and concluded that it was a form of divine retribution – punishment for the recently enacted Poor Law and the system of workhouses to which destitute families were to be consigned. This was certainly the opinion of one contemporary diarist who mingled amongst the multitude that night. He recalled that "The crowd was rather pleased than otherwise; whistling when the breeze came as if to encourage it; 'There's a flare-up for the House of Lords.' 'A judgment for the Poor Law Bill!', 'There go their acts!' Such exclamations seemed to be the prevailing ones. A man sorry I did not anywhere see."

One man who certainly was not sorry to see Parliament go up in smoke was the satirist C.J. Grant. By the time of the fire in 1834 Grant’s career had reached its creative and commercial peak. He was partway through producing the 134 prints which would eventually make up The Political Drama series and was also engaged in creating images for a number of London-based caricature magazines. The London crowd’s reaction to the destruction of Parliament perhaps explains why Grant’s radical political satires were so popular – A man preaching dissent was always likely to find a ready audience amongst the residents of a city who were politically disillusioned enough to stand back and crack jokes whilst the seat of their government burned to the ground.

Grant published two separate satirical prints on the fire. The first of these was a woodblock engraved single sheet caricature which was issued as part of The Political Drama series. The print carries the subtitle ‘Burnt Out and No Mistake’ and shows a ragged group of politicians carrying what is left of their possessions out of the smouldering remains of Parliament. Some members of the group, including Lord Eldon, the Dukes of Wellington and Cumberland, turn and hold out their hats towards John Bull. Cumberland says “pray bestow your charity, Mister Bull, on us poor burned out society of Cobblers, Tinkers and Cabinet Makers. We were driven out by a dreadful fire on the 16^th of October last, which destroyed our place of meeting and every vestige of our ancient Records and Secret Acts, with other valuables for our Benefit and Advantage and we are now thrown upon the generosity of a humane and soft-hearted public - surely we do not plead in vain, sir.”

John eyes the group with a gruff expression and exclaims “Eh! What, ask me for more money, you vagabonds, after having drain’d my pockets, year after year, and have [sic] left me almost a beggar. Give more money to ye, aye, no I’ll see ye all d--nd first, go to you patron Old Nick [Satan], and ax him for a lift... t’was a great pity when the filthy old Rookery was burning that the Rooks warn’t in it at the same time.”

C.J. Grant, The Political Drama No. 59, c.1834

Grant also devoted almost an entire edition of his self-published fortnightly caricature magazine, Every Body’s Album... to the subject of the fire. The large panel at the top of the page contained a reworked version of Burned Out & No Mistake with some minor modifications, such as the addition of the Speaker, Charles Manners-Sutton, carrying the smoking remains of his chair over his head. Below that Grant included a number of smaller satirical images. Bringing in a Bill is a punning reference to King William IV’s inspection of the remains of the Houses of Parliament on the day after the fire. Grant has the monarch peering stupidly at the burnt-out throne and gasping “My Eyes! What a breach of privilege”. In two of the other small caricatures he sarcastically depicts groups of MPs trying to hold parliamentary debates whilst squatting amidst piles of debris and one panel shows Lord Brougham, the Chancellor, being forced to sew together a replacement woolsack for the Lords to sit upon. At the bottom of the page there is a small sketch of the still smoking ruins of the old Houses of Parliament, which Grant may well have drawn in person, under which is written “The People’s Parliament!! no doubt / Was meant merely as a joke / The world now sees the truth is out / For it ended all in smoke”.

C.J. Grant, Every Body's Album & Caricature Magazine No. 21, 1st November 1834

However much radicals like Grant may have delighted at the thought of Parliament being forced to meet in more modest surroundings, it was not to be. After alternative locations, including the newly renovated Buckingham Palace, were briefly considered and then rejected, a Royal Commission was established to oversee construction of a new Palace of Westminster on the site of the old one. The Commission eventually settled upon Charles Barry’s plan for a Gothic-style palace and construction of the current Houses of Parliament began in April 1840.

Thomas Rowlandson's Doctor Syntax trilogy (1809 - 1821)

2012-01-24T13:00:00.000-08:00

The frontispiece to the complete edition of Doctor Syntax's First Tour, 1812

One evening, sometime late in the summer of 1808, Thomas Rowlandson attended a small dinner party held by some friends. He had just returned from holiday in the South West of England but his companions thought that he looked somewhat districted and a little glum. Jack Bannister, a comic actor who had known Rowlandson since his school days, recalled that he eventually turned to his old acquaintance and asked “What are you about, Rolly?” “Why, nothing in particular,” the artist replied. “I think my inventive faculty has been very sluggish of late. I wish one of you would give me a hint.” After a little coaxing, Rowlandson explained to his fellow diners that in fact he did have one idea for a new series of prints; “I have been making a tour in Cornwall and Devonshire with a friend who, as I have made sketches on the coast for him, wishes me to introduce adventures at inns, and other comic incidents, in which he was the principle party.” The only problem was that Rowlandson felt that his travelling companion, who was vastly overweight and walked with the aid of two sticks, was wholly unsuited to play the role of a roving comic hero. “I have it!”, said Bannister, “You must fancy a skin-and-bone hero, a pedantic old prig, in a shovel-hat, with a pony, sketching tools and rattle traps, and place him in such scrapes as travellers frequently meet with... Come! Give us a sheet of paper, and we’ll strike off a few hints”.

This was how Jack Bannister later recalled the moment in which Thomas Rowlandson created one of his most well-known comic creations: the inimitable Doctor Syntax. Whether Bannister’s version of events is accurate or not (he was recounting the incident to a biographer some thirty years later and was certainly not shy about crediting himself with a hand in Syntax’s creation), we do know that in the late summer of 1808 Rowlandson produced a number of rough sketches featuring a slim, craggy-faced, bewigged clergyman, who sets off on an old horse one day to tour the English Lake District.

Rowlandson eventually showed these early drawings to the publisher Rudolph Ackermann, who liked them and agreed to purchase them for future use. One evening in the spring of 1809 Ackermann was leafing through a large portfolio of drawings he had purchased from Rowlandson and showing some of them to William Combe, a perpetually cash-strapped writer who was working for the publisher at that time, when he came across the sketches of Rowlandson’s accident-prone curate. Both men thought that the character had great comic potential and are supposed to have agreed there and then that a new series of prints would be issued, with Rowlandson providing the images and Combe supplying a narrative verse to link the pictures together.

Despite the fact that Rowlandson and Combe were to go on to create one of the most enduring and recognisable figures in Georgian caricature, their partnership was one which was carried out almost entirely at arm’s length. Ackermann acted as intermediary between the two men, taking copies of Rowlandson’s sketches over to Combe and returning notes from the writer which explained how the images could be tweaked to more accurately reflect the verse. In addition the publisher also exercised an editorial veto over Rowlandson’s more risqué drawings. He not only refused to publish images of Syntax groping a bare-breasted dairy maid, or having his backside ‘cupped’ after a riding accident, he also even declined to forward them on to Combe, who was of a conservative disposition and had already made it clear that he would not ‘lend his pen’ “if ridicule [of the clergy] was the intention”.

Plate 21 from In Search of the Picturesque. Rowlandson's original sketch of this scene showed the Doctor indulging in some particularly unparson-like behaviour with the young milk maid but was vetoed by Ackermann.

Doctor Syntax made his first public appearance on 1st May 1809 in Ackermann’s Poetical Magazine under the title The School Master’s Tour and would go on to appear in 27 subsequent editions of the magazine between 1809 and 1811. Comic clergymen have always enjoyed a prominent place in the lexicon of English comedy and the serialised account of the Doctor’s drawing tour in the Lake District proved to be spectacularly popular. In 1812 Ackermann republished the whole series in an expensive bound volume, under a new title, The Tour of Doctor Syntax, In Search of the Picturesque. Three new plates were added to this edition: a title page, a frontispiece of Syntax relaxing at home in his study and a plate showing the Doctor asleep and dreaming of books flying around his library.

The unexpected popularity of Doctor Syntax’s first outing led Ackermann to engage Rowlandson and Combe in a number of lucrative follow-up projects, the most notable of these being The English Dance of Death series published between 1814 and 1816. However by 1819 it must have become clear to the publisher that there was still plenty of money to be made from another Syntax adventure. Reprinted editions of the First Tour were still selling well and even bootleg versions of the stories were starting to appear and run through multiple print runs.* Ackermann was never one to let a business opportunity pass him by and he eventually persuaded Rowlandson to bring the character out of retirement for a sequel which began in serial form in January 1820.

Rowlandson's original watercolour sketch for plate 8 from In Search of the Picturesque (V&A collection)

The Second Tour of Doctor Syntax, in Search of Consolation, opens with the death of Mrs Syntax and sees the good doctor taking in the sights of Bath, Oxford and London as he heads off on consolatory trip around Southern England. The opening episodes were once again presented in serial form in Ackermann’s Poetical Magazine, running from January until August 1820, with the September issue carrying an advert informing readers that they could purchase a complete edition of the Second Tour from the Repository of Arts.

The Second Tour appears to have been every bit as successful as the First but to more critical modern eyes it certainly has flaws. Like so many sequels, it consists largely of material which had been recycled from the first book and from other prints which Rowlandson had produced years before. In many of the plates visual comedy takes a backseat and is replaced with straightforward images of Syntax visiting notable landmarks or engaged in mundane activities like drawing up a will. Even the scenes which are intended to be funny feel a little lifeless and repetitive (e.g. Syntax being chased by animals, or engaging in an uncharacteristic bout of drinking). The drop-off in quality may indicate that, by 1820, Rowlandson was starting to lose interest in the character and that he was merely going through the motions in order to generate some income. Combe’s preface to the first edition of the Second Tour, in which the writer points out his own increased involvement in devising new scenes, certainly seems to suggest that Combe was rapidly becoming the driving force behind the project.

Plate 16 from In Search of Consolation, 1820

Nevertheless the Second Tour was commercial successful and Ackermann, who was perhaps conscience of Rowlandson’s flagging interest in the project, pushed the pair on into rapidly producing a third volume which could be published almost immediately after the second. The first instalment of The Third Tour of Doctor Syntax, In Search of a Wife, duly appeared in the November edition of Ackermann’s magazine, with publication of the bound edition of the complete series following in June 1821.

The haste with which the final instalment of the Syntax trilogy was thrown together is somewhat evident from the quality of the finished product. In his preface Combe claimed that all three Tours were “equally indebted to Mr Rowlandson’s talents” and that “the same mode of composition has been employed in the last as in the former volumes” but a comparative analysis of the trilogy suggests otherwise. Combe’s dominance over the project becomes even more apparent in the third instalment of the Syntax trilogy and much of the first half of the book appears to have been written in advance, cleared with Ackermann and then simply passed to Rowlandson to supply illustrations. Consequently, the text-to-picture ratio in In Search of a Wife is far lower than the previous two Syntax adventures, with the snappy verses of the first book being replaced by sprawling cantos covering several pages. Eventually it seems as though Ackermann, who may have been concerned about the saleability of a book which was too heavily dominated by Combe’s rambling and sometimes truly awful rhyming couplets, intervened and order the pair to revert back to their previous method of working.

Combe mapped out a plot which would in fact consist of two separate tours. One, taking Syntax on a circuit of his suitably odd and humorous collection of friends, from whom he would obtain matrimonial advice and the names of eligible bachelorettes, and a second, which would see him visit the lucky ladies in order to assess their matrimonial potential. The quality of the illustrations Rowlandson produced for In Search of a Wife were variable but it seems probable that the plot appealed more to Rowlandson’s cheeky sense of humour and a number of the plates he produced for the series, such as The Advertisement for a Wife in which the Doctor is set on by a pack of desperate female suitors, are classic examples of the artist’s work.

Plate 18 from In Search of a Wife, 1821

The fact that Rowlandson and Combe decided to kill-off their hero suddenly at the end of the third series suggests that either one, or maybe both, of them felt that the character had finally run out of steam. If was the case then it is likely that it would have been Rowlandson who insisted that the series must be brought to an end - Combe appears to have been happy to continue writing for as long as someone was willing to pay him to do so. The following year, in 1821 he even convinced Ackermann to allow him to produce a Doctor Syntax spin-off, based around the life of an orphan which Syntax found on the Third Tour and is supposed to have subsequently adopted.

For all their flaws the books in the Doctor Syntax trilogy should be recognised as containing some of the most popular and enduring images created by Thomas Rowlandson. The series remained in print until the early twentieth century and even today, if you walk into just about any antique shop in England, there’s a good chance that you’ll see a small engraved picture of a "skin-and-bone" cleric in an old-fashioned wig staring back at you from one of the walls.

Doctor Syntax's funeral, the final image from In Search of a Wife, 1821

Further Reading

J. Adolphus, Memoirs of Jack Bannister, Comedian, 2 vols., London, 1839.

J. Ford, Ackermann 1783-1983: The Business of Art, London, 1983.

A.L. Gully, Thomas Rowlandson’s Doctor Syntax, Stanford, 1972.

M. Payne & J. Payne, Regarding Thomas Rowlandson 1757 – 1827: His Life Art and & Acquaintance, London 2010.

P. Phagan (ed.), Thomas Rowlandson: Pleasures and Pursuits in Georgian England, New York, 2011.

W.H. Phyne, Somerset House Gazette and Literary Museum, no. 41, 17^th July, 1841.

An online version of the illustrations from all three of Doctor Syntax’s tours can be found at;

http://www.antiquemapsandprints.com/geography-travels/thomas-rowlandson-caricatures.htm

* See: B. Blake, The Adventures of Doctor Comicus, Or, The Frolics of Fortune. A Comic Satirical Poem for the Squeamish & The Queer, (1815), J. Johnston, The Tour of Doctor Syntax through London, Or, The Pleasures and Miseries of the Metropolis, (1820), Anon., Doctor Syntax in Paris, Or, A Tour in Search of the Grotesque (1820). Ironically, thanks to the comparatively small number of books that were published, these bootleg versions of Doctor Syntax are now often worth far more to collectors than a genuine edition.

The Macaroni Print Shop - Matthew (c.1720 - 78?) and Mary Darly (fl. 1755-1781)

2012-01-19T08:53:00.000-08:00

Edward Topham, The Macaroni Print Shop, 1772
The Darlys shop at 39 Strand. This is the earliest known representation of a print shop window and the Darlys may well have been the first print-sellers in London to decorate the front of their store entirely with caricature prints.

The Strand was one of the main commercial thoroughfares of eighteenth century London. During the late middle ages and Tudor period the street had been one of Capital’s most prestigious addresses and home to several large mansion houses belonging to various member of the English nobility. A major building programme during the late seventeenth century had resulted in the demolition of many of the old medieval palaces and the erection of a series of impressive new buildings, side-streets and piazzas, all laid out in the fashionable Italianate style. By the middle of the eighteenth century the Strand was primarily known as a commercial district with a reputation for coffee houses, inns, seedy nightlife and bustling markets. If one were to take a stroll along the Strand in the mid-1760s, you would eventually come to the entranceway of one such market at Hungerford. Turning south to look across the busy thoroughfare, directly opposite the butchers and greengrocers stalls of the market, you would see a shop with a large glass frontage in which was displayed a huge range of satirical prints. The shop, “at the sign of the Acorn”, was home to a married couple who were perhaps the foremost producers of satirical prints during the middle decades of the eighteenth century – Matthew and Mary Darly.

Anon., A Hungry Mob of Scribblers and Etchers, 1762
A satirical attack on Lord Bute's attempt to hire caricaturists, writers and other artists to produce pro-government propaganda which would act as a counterweight to attacks from John Wilkes North Briton and other radical publications.

Matthew Darly was probably a commercial draughtsman by background and what little evidence exists of his early life suggests that he dabbled in architectural design and the production of patterns which were used to decorate furniture and ceramics. We know that Darly had also entered the print-selling business by 1749, as it is in this year that he was called to appear before a Parliamentary committee of enquiry investigating the trade in “obscene” prints. However, the fact that Darly described himself as a "seal engraver" under cross-examination by the committee, suggests that the production of prints had not yet become the main focus of his business operations.

Matthew Darly, Untitled, 1754.
An ornamental design by Darly which was included in a catalogue of patterns for use in the production of ceramics.

The Darlys did not publish political prints in any great number until the mid-1750s and by this time their caricatures had begun to take on a distinctive character; often stark, crudely executed and occasionally coloured with the same shades of reddish-purple, blue, mustard yellow and vivid green. The Darlys prints stood out as being instantly recognisable in a market which was still dominated by heavily-worked Hogarthian designs and the shop was amongst the first to specialise in the production of prints which were overtly political. It is thought that many of these early prints were probably designed and etched by Mary Darly. Mary was not the first woman caricaturist in England but she was the first female to take up caricature and print-selling as a profession and as such has been described as “the art form’s true mother” by on historian.

M. Darly, The Way the Cat Jumps, 1756

Matthew Darly, The French King in a Sweat or Paris Coiners 1759, 1759
Political satire on the financial problems France experienced during the Seven Years War

The Darlys dominated London’s print trade for roughly a decade, lasting from the mid-1750s until the mid-1760s and the couple were the first print-sellers in London to make the production and sale of caricatures the mainstay of their business. The degree of commercial success they enjoyed in this period can be judged by the fact that they were generating a sufficient amount of revenue to open a second shop in Cranbourne Alley near Leicester Fields in 1762.

Mary Darly, The Scotch Damien, 1762
The political caricatures which the Darlys produced in the early 1760s all adopted a consistently anti-ministerial stance and as a result the pair seem to have become casual acquiantances and supporters of John Wilkes. This print satirises an incident in which an enraged Scot attempted to assault Wilkes for publishing anti-Scottish comments in his journal North Briton.

Two principle factors seem to have been responsible for the couples’ good fortune – Firstly, their ability to innovate and present caricature and satirical art in new and exciting ways which captured the imaginations of fashionable Londoners. Secondly, the way in which they were able to exploit the enthusiasm of amateur caricaturist.

One of the Darlys earliest innovations was the publication of small, playing-card-sized, sixpenny prints which could be sent by post. The first of these was The Pillars of State, a design by the aristocratic amateur George Townshend (1724 – 1807) which satirised the Duke of Newcastle (the Prime Minister and Townshend’s uncle). By 1756 these little prints had become fashionable items and Mary Darly sought to further exploit there popularity by republishing collections of them in small and expensively bound annuals under the general title A Political and Satyrical History of the Year... It was in these books that the term “caricature” was first used as a short-hand description for political prints.

Amongst the other novelties to emerge from the Darlys shops were ‘transparent’ prints in which a second image could be seen by holding the paper up to light and ready-made sets consisting of artists’ colours and materials for customers who were keen to set about designing their own satires. Enthusiasts could also pay to take instruction in caricature design and engraving from Mary and Matthew themselves. Mary Darly also wrote, engraved and published Britain’s first manual on caricature in 1762. Entitled A Book of Caricaturas, on 59 Copper Plates, with Ye Principles of Designing in the Droll & Pleasing Manner, it included work by her pupils and clients, as well as herself. It was aimed at “young gentlemen and ladies” and other amateur artists’ who wishes to learn “carrick” drawing and was “laid down in so easy a manner that a young genius may soon attain to a facility in drawing any Droll Phiz [comic face] or Carrick...”

The frontispiece from Mary Darly's Book of Caricaturas... and an example of one of the 59 instructional plates included with the volume. 1762.

The other aspect of the Darlys shop which was unique was the frequency with which they employed amateur designers. Commercially this was a new approach to print-selling but was one which made perfect sense when you consider that a business which relied almost entirely on the publication of newsworthy satires for its survival would be in need of a constant stream of new designs in order to stay afloat. Matthew Darly even went so far as to take out regular adverts in the fashionable journals, calling on “ladies and gentlemen artists &c.” to present their designs at one of his shops and promising to provide them with the aid of an engraver who would transfer them to copperplate for printing. William Henry Bunbury was amongst those who took up the Darlys offer of assistance and he was to produced his first ever prints for their shop.

William Bunbury, Le Cabriolet, 1770
A nice coloured example of one of the small caricatures which the Darlys printed on cards.

In addition to providing the Darlys with a wealth of free ideas, it's not hard to imagine that the influx of amateur designs would also have informed them of what topics were particularly popular at any given moment and were therefore likely to result in the highest number of sales.

The Darlys output became increasingly dominated by social satire during the 1770s and in particular the hugely popular series of prints they published on the subject of the ‘Macaronis’. The Macaroni was essentially an early incarnation of the dandy; a fashionable and wealthy young fop who had returned from the Continent with an appetite for questionable foreign food and fashions. In total the Darlys produced six series of Macaroni prints with each series containing 24 different plates. The volume of prints produced in this series perhaps provides some indication of their popularity.

Matthew Darly, The Female Conoiseur, 1772
The British Museum Catalogue suggests that this print is a portrait of Mary Darly holding a copy of a print from the 'Macaroni' series.

The success of the Macaroni prints was a last flourish for the Darlys career as print-sellers. From the mid-1770s onwards the output of their shops began to dwindle and Matthew’s name disappears entirely from their prints after 1778. Mary closed their original shop in the Strand the following year before relocating to smaller premises in Fleet Street in 1780. The final prints known to carry her name are dated 1781.

Mary Darly, A Petitioning, Remonstrating, Reforming Republican, 1780
A satirical attack upon the Association Movement, a popular society which was formed in the final years of the American War of Independence to petition for Parliamentary reform and an end to the war with the Colonies. A squatting reformer defecates in an uptunred crown whilst simultaneously urinating in a bishop's mitre.

No-one knows the precisely why the Darlys business fell into decline. The tailing off of Matthew’s output from the mid-1770s onwards would suggest that illness or infirmity might have played its part but one also cannot escape from the conclusion that, after 25 years of dominating the London print trade, the Darlys may have simply ceased to be relevant and been overtaken by their competitors. It is perhaps more than coincidence that the decline of Matthew and Mary’s business coincided with the rise to prominence of another print-selling couple; the siblings William and Hannah Humprheys. The Humphreys not only went onto reissue a number of original designs by Darly in the 1780s, suggesting they had bought the majority of Mary’s stock when she finally ceased publication, but they also began to find regular employment for a young artist by the name of James Gillray, who is thought by some to have produced some of his first ever engravings for Matthew and Mary’s shop.

James Gillray, Bombardian, 1779
Humphreys commissioned Gillray to produce this copy of an original design by Darly. Dorothy George also attributes the original Darly edition to Gillray but this assertion is challenged in the British Museum's online catalogue.

Britannia's letter to her daughter, May 6th 1778

2012-01-11T11:29:00.000-08:00

Rebus puzzles were one of many side-lines into which print shops and caricaturists diversified during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The rebus, a puzzle in which pictures are used to substitute syllabic sounds in a piece of text, had its origins in medieval heraldry but became particularly fashionable during the last quarter of the eighteenth century and there are numerous examples of satirical and ephemeral rebuses in most major collections of British caricature prints from this period.

The example shown here was produced by the London shop of Matthew and Mary Darly in May 1778. It refers to a little known dispute called the American War of Independence and is written in the style of a letter from a mother, Britannia, to her wayward American daughter.

Have a look at the letter and see if you can work out what it says. I will post the answer in the comments section underneath this post.

Matthew & Mary Darly, Britannia's letter to America, 6th May 1778

Interestingly, the Darly’s were also commercially savvy enough to publish a second rebus which showed America’s less than deferential response to Britannia’s maternal chastisement. It is often forgotten that there was a significant amount of public support for the American colonies in Britain during the War of Independence. At the time the conflict was seen as a civil war and American criticisms of the corrupt and arbitrary nature of British government were shared by many Britons who supported Parliamentary reform at home. The production of this second print suggests that the Darly’s were just as happy selling prints to the supporters of the colonists as to their opponents.

Matthew & Mary Darly, America's reply to Britannia, 6th May 1778

Success to the Volunteers - More printed pottery

2012-01-09T12:03:00.000-08:00

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a small post about a ceramic jug which had been decorated with a design copied from Gillray. Since then I’ve become more interested in the subject of reproduction of caricature designs in other mediums and on pottery in particular.

The connection between the print shops of London and the pottery industries of the English Midlands and the North seems to have been established early in the development of transfer printing on ceramics at the start of the 1760s. John Sadler, a transfer printer who worked for Josiah Wedgewood’s factory in Stoke-on-Trent, wrote to Wedgewood in London in March 1763 and asked him to send copies of the latest prints back to Stoke by coach. He also enclosed a shopping list, asking his boss to take particular care to acquire;

The Triple Plea – tis an old print.

The Lucky Minute – a half sheet print. Pr[iced] 6d.

Harvest Home

A pict of horses and dogs, in rounds about an inch in diameter and what else you like

In April 1765 Wedgewood himself wrote to his brother John, then acting as the potter’s agent in London, to inform him that;

The last post brought me five pacquets [sic] from Sr. Wm. [Sir William Meredith, a Member of Parliament] inclosing prints of different sorts which is so obliging to employ his good taste in picking up for me at the Printshops.

Three months later and again in correspondence with his brother, Wedgewood wrote;

I intend sending two sets of vases, creamcolour, engine turned, and printed, for which purpose nothing could be more suitable than some copperplates I have by me... but I am one... design short which I have sketched out and inclos’d and desire that you will get it done by Wale unless you know a better hand. It must be engraved, any of the print shops (Mr Bowles in Cornhill in particular) will direct you to Wale...

It would therefore appear that the men who designed and engraved caricatures for London’s print shops found a thriving secondary market for their skills in the pottery trade.

Ceramics, like prints, were commercial items and the designs which were copied onto them were presumably ones which potters felt were likely to attract the largest share of a particular market. Analysis of the reproduction of caricatures as transfer designs for pottery may therefore give us some broad indication of the prevailing attitudes of a section of the British public at a given moment in history.

One example of the way in which popular designs could be reproduced is shown in the photographs below. This is a copy of a print which was originally produced by Charles Williams and published by S.W. Fores. The governor of Europe, stoped in his career. Or little B-n to much for great B-te is typical of the pugnaciously patriotic satires which were being produced between 1803 and 1805, when it was feared that Britain was at serious risk of a French invasion. Napoleon straddles a map of Europe and has stretched out one leg in order to stamp upon the British Isles, but his foot has been hacked off by a diminutive John Bull who stares back defiantly and says “I ax pardon Master Boney, but as we says Paws off Pompey, we keep this little Spot to Ourselves You must not Dance here Master Boney."

Charles Williams original design for Fores.

The design was popular enough to be reproduced in multiple variations on ceramic jugs, with customers being able to buy black, red or full colour versions depending on how much they wished to pay.

The potters further exploited the patriotic fervour by coupling the caricature with a print on the reverse which read ‘Success to the Volunteers’. The volunteer companies were comprised of men who had come forward and offered to serve in local militia units which would be called into action in the event that French troops were landed on British soil. In some counties of England it is estimated that around 50% of all men were enrolled in a volunteer company, a degree of military mobilisation which even exceeded that achieved during the wars of the twentieth century. The Volunteers, often dressed in ostentatious military uniforms, also captured the imagination of the wider public. George Cruikshank, looking back from his dotage, recalled watching his father’s regiment;

I remember feeling considerable pride and pleasure when I saw the Volunteers... march to Hyde Park to be reviewed, where they acquitted themselves in so soldier-like a manner as to gain the approbation of the reviewers, and, of course, of themselves... Every town was, in fact, some sort of garrison – in one place you might hear the ‘tattoo’ of some youth learning to beat the drum, at another place some march or national air being practised up the fife, and every morning at five o’clock the bugle-horn was sounded throughout the streets to call the volunteers to... drill.

It was clearly sentiments such as these which the canny potters and print-makers hoped to turn into profit.

The political satires of Honore Daumier (1830-1870)

2012-01-06T12:54:00.000-08:00

A lithographic portrait of Daumier in later life, c.1870

In spite of the tradition for caricature pioneered by Hogarth, Gillray and others in Georgian Britain, the onset of the Victorian era ushered in a decline in the potency and popularity of British political and social caricature. Economic prosperity and the gradual reform and removal of the most grotesquely unfair and corrupt elements of the constitutional system had undercut popular interest in the ideological extremities of British politics, whilst the growing middle classes obsession with the notion of ‘respectability’ made the debauched, sexual and scatological humour of Georgian social satire a taboo.

The changing tastes of British audiences were reflected in the prints which were being produced in England during the 1830s and 1840s. Caricature was gradually abandoned in favour of a more illustrative style which inherently implied a greater degree of deference to authority figures and reflected the more staid standards of Victorian humour.

In post-Napoleonic France however this situation was completely reversed. A series of economic downturns, coupled with a rising tide of liberal opposition to the restored Bourbon monarchy, meant that the participation of the urban middle and working classes in French politics increased during the 1830s and 40s. The spread of lithographic printing also meant that French publishers could now exploit popular interest in political events by producing printed materials with unprecedented speed and at price which allowed graphic satire to become an item of relative mass-consumption.

By the far most successful caricaturist to emerge in France during this period was Honoré Daumier. As a satirist he enjoyed a degree of popular political influence which arguably exceeded that of any of his English predecessors and his work has come to typify nineteenth century France in the popular imagination, in much the same way as Gillray’s work has for late-Hanoverian England.

Honore Victorin Daumier was born in Marseilles February 27, 1808. His father, Jean Baptiste, was an artisan – a glazier, who had his own shop. Honore’s mother was a poorly educated village woman. Jean Baptiste was not an ordinary glazier. He was self-educated, a thinker and poet. A product of the Enlightenment and Revolution, he was a passionate admirer of Jean Jacques Rousseau and Condillac; and for his verse he took as models the classic French tragedies of Racine and the Latin poetry of Virgil, which he knew in translation.

Even under Napoleon the revolutionary ideal of equality still influenced provincial intellectual circles. The Academy of Marseilles encouraged the literary endeavours of the workman-poet, which appeared in the local press, and finally honoured him with membership. The older Daumier now made a literary career his sole aim. He wrote a five-act tragedy in Alexandrine meter about Philip II of Spain. It was generously applauded at its reading before the Academy of Marseilles. Intoxicated with this success, Jean Baptiste sold his modest shop and with his family set out for Paris, the literary capital.

It was hardly a favourable time in Paris for even the most talented of newcomers. This was 1814, the year of the Napoleonic Götterdammerung. It had opened with the joint invasion of France by all its enemies. The militarily brilliant, but politically hopeless, campaign of the Emperor had not prevented the taking of Paris. In quick succession came Napoleon’s first abdication, exile to Elba, restoration of the Bourbons, to be followed in less than a year by the Hundred Days, Waterloo and the second return of the Bourbons.

Even when calm years finally came, the elder Daumier continued to meet rebuffs from theatrical producers and publishers. In the whole period he succeeded in getting but one volume of poetry published, probably at his own expense. Meanwhile his family suffered great material hardship. After nine years the disheartened worker-poet gave up the unequal battle and took up his glazier’s tools again, though still remaining in Paris.

Honore had started to draw on his own at an early age and became increasingly infatuated with it. One can readily appreciate the father’s alarm as he saw his son heading into – what must have seemed from his own bitter experience – a blind alley for people of their station in life. Drawing met parental discouragement and Honore was apprenticed to a law-court usher with the perspective of rising to a modest but dependable position.

Daumier first came to public attention as an artist in 1830 when his lithographs commenting on the July Revolution and the final collapse of the Bourbon monarchy appeared in Philipon’s weekly journal La Silhouette. Thereafter he would remain in the public eye for nearly fifty years. In spite of Daumier’s popularity and the observations left about him by many famous contemporaries, he himself left almost no written record of his views, and remarkably little detail is known of his early life. Nevertheless over 4,000 lithographs by Daumier survive, as well as 300 painting and numerous sculptures.

By a law of 25^th March 1822 all publishers were required to deposit one copy of ever lithograph for official authorisation prior to publication. Ironically this system of censorship, although no doubt tiresome and stifling for the artist, has helped the historian. Copies of all the prints submitted, regardless of whether they were approved for publication or not, were archived in the King’s Library which has subsequently been subsumed by the collection of the Bibliotheque Nationale. The authoritarian tendencies of the regime also led to the collection and preservation of subscription lists for caricature journals such as Le Charivari and La Silhouette, meaning we know far more about the circulation and consumption of graphic satire in France than in Britain during the Nineteenth Century.

Daumier’s personal role during the 1830 Revolution is unclear. His lithographs on the subject suggest that he was a strong supporter of those manning the barricades and that he applauded Charles X’s expulsion from the throne. The caricatures which Daumier went on to produce during the 1830s and 40s suggest that he was a supporter of the republican faction in French politics and therefore, like many other republicans, he may have initially welcomed the arrival of the liberally minded Louis Philippe to the throne in 1830. However this did not last long. It rapidly became clear that the political outlook of the French monarchy remained fundamentally conservative in nature and that the regime was intent on consolidating its power by drastically curtailing the influence of republicanism in French politics. Interior Minister Francois Guizot passed a number of pieces of legislation in the early 1830s which aimed to breakup republican labour groups and societies and which even outlawed the use of the term ‘republican’.

Guizot’s heavy-handed anti-republican measures prompted Daumier and a collection of other artists and journalists who had gathered around the republican publisher Charles Philipon, into action. Inevitably, Louis Philippe became the central target for attack in Daumier’s war against the government, with the image of ‘la poire’ (the pear) emerging as the subtle weapon of choice.

The original print by Philipon from Le Charivari which shows the King's face gradually turning into a pear.

Whilst the idea of comparing the head of state to a pear may seem fairly innocuous to modern audiences it caused a minor sensation in France during the early 1830s. The King had deliberately sought to cultivate an image of middle class respectability which Philipon and Daumier cleverly turned against him by constantly comparing him to a lifeless and dull piece of fruit. Frenchmen increasingly came to the conclusion that the monarch was a dullard and that under his stewardship France enjoyed a fraction of the international prestige she had in her Revolutionary and Napoleonic heyday.

Daumier's Gargantua (1831) is perhaps one of the most scathing caricatures of Louis Philippe. The monarch is presented as a leviathen which hungrily consumes sacks of money which are carried up his gaping mouth by ranks of ragged French peasants.

Daumier was arrested and had his press and large quantities of his plates seized in August 1832 but this seems to have done little to blunt his determination to continue attacking the regime. Upon being released from prison later that year, he began publishing a series of grotesquely caricatured portraits of government ministers which were published in both Le Charivari and La Caricature. The series was completed by a final lithograph in early 1833, The Legislative Paunch, which showed rows of parliamentary benches occupied by a revolting looking group of ministers and deputies.

The Legislative Paunch, 1834

Though both liberals and republicans had demanded a free press as an outcome of the 1830 Revolution, in fact, as Daumier discovered first hand, the July Monarchy began to seek to use the law in order to curtail the freedom of the press. By the end of 1834 there had been numerous court cases instigated against journalists and satirists on charges of insulting the King or inciting hatred and contempt of the government. Arrest, packed juries, fines, suspended sentences and imprisonment became an occupational hazard for members of the press. In France, as in Regency England, the authorities found graphic satire more difficult to prosecute than written words and consequently caricature became an increasingly popular means of evading government censorship.

Produced for La Caricature in 1835 this print shows a young Louis Philippe in bed with two animal-like native American women during his stay in Philadelphia during the 1790s. The caption reads; "Honest reward, decreed, in 1800, to Louis Philippe of Orleans, surgeon and immigrant, but always French, by the not very delicate savages of North America."

Daumier did what he could to highlight government oppression. I am pleased with you, my brave fellows (1834) depicted an incident in which policemen, disguised as workers, brutally dispersed a crowd near the Bourse. Perhaps the most moving was Rue Transnonain: April 15^th 1834. Telescoping a series of repressive acts by the authorities into a single event, Daumier employed a realistic style to heighten the impact.

Rue Transnonain: April 15^th 1834

A caricature from Le Charivari, 1835. The dead of the revolutions of 1789 and 1830 rise from their graves to witness the police dispersing a demonstrating crowd. The caption reads "So this is what we got ourselves killed for!"

The role of the press in defending the people’s rights and liberties represented another priority. In October 1833 Daumier depicted a printer using a press to squeeze Louis Philippe into a shapeless pulp, whilst in March 1834 he produced another print showing a heroic-looking printer standing up defiantly against the attempts of the umbrella-waving ruler to curtail press freedom. Money raised from the sale of this image was donated to L’Association Mensuelle Lithographique, a mutual aid fund established to help meet the fines imposed on caricaturists and journalists.

The gradual tightening of restrictions upon press freedom and the determination with which the government continued to pursue prosecutions against unfriendly journalists seems to have convinced Daumier to retreat from political prints from 1835 onwards. He turned instead to the production of social satires which provide an absorbing panoramic commentary on everyday life in mid-nineteenth century Paris. Industrialisation, railway building, financial speculation, labour relations and the pitfalls of the French legal system all found a place in a body of work which Baudelaire described as a pictorial version of Balzac’s La Comedie Humaine.

Some of Daumier’s more enthusiastic biographers have argued that his work during the 1830s and early 1840s constituted a more subtle form of political satire, one which rarely missed an opportunity to draw attention to the failure of the July Monarchy to reduce unemployment and inadequate housing and which often portrayed the poor as the downtrodden victims of grasping landlords or indifferent courts. It is clear that Daumier’s social satires continued to portray elements of the artist’s underlying political conscience but it is difficult to distinguish the degree to which these satires were intended to act as overt political propaganda, as opposed to merely being commercial items, or a more personal reflection upon the financial difficulties in which Daumier found himself during the closing years of the 1830s.

Louis Philppe’s failure to reconcile monarchy with the new forces emerging in French society played an important part in the proclamation of the Second Republic in 1848. The extent to which Daumier and company had performed a contributory role, whether by pressing the republican message, attacking the fundamental props of the July Monarchy, or undermining the regimes credibility in the eyes of the public remains unquantifiable. The repressive measures employed by the government suggest that the satirists were viewed as a genuine threat to the existing political and social order, even if the uncertainties regarding their responsibility for leading people out onto the streets in 1848 have been stressed by historians like David Kerr. What is certain is that Daumier, whose Last Cabinet Meeting of the Ex-Ministers (1848) contrasted the confusion amongst the discredited government of Louis Philippe with the serene figure the Republic, welcomed the final collapse of monarchical government in France in 1848.

As a republican Daumier was able to exploit the opportunities available to sympathetic artists under the Second Republic by attracting state funding for his work and using this to indulge a passion for painting. But there remained a insatiable demand for his lithographs, many of which now began to record the artists escalating concern about the Republics rapid loss of direction and the rise of new authoritarian threat in the form of Bonapartism. This found expression in the creation of the caricature of Ratapoil, the cudgel-wielding Bonapartist agent. Ratapoil was an agent-provocateur, a thug and a section leader of the Society of December 10^th; the private army which President Louis Bonaparte often shipped ahead when he toured France so they could impersonate the masses at each railroad station, shout, “Vive l’Empereur!“ and beat up any opponents. Daumier shows Ratapoil as a sinister, seedy, middle-aged but wiry adventurer, with an imperial beard and mustache, carrying a half-concealed club up his sleeve.

"Ratapoil spreading the news. - If you love your wife, your house, your land, your cow and calf, sign here, you mustn't linger!..."

"On the day of the review Ratapoil and his staff are on hand - Vive L'Empereur!" A satire on Bonapartist 'rent-a-mobs'.

The fall of the Second Republic and the increasingly reactionary character of Napoleon III’s Second Empire forced Daumier to repeat his post-1835 retreat into general social commentary. Ratapoil was replaced by a parade of blandly comic characters and prints on conventional news items such as the 1855 Great Exhibition and Haussmann’s rebuilding of Paris. However Daumier would live to see the return of republican government and he returned to political satire for one his final lithographs, The Corpse of Monarchy, in 1872.

Print shop windows - An online lecture by Mark Bills

2012-01-02T12:02:00.000-08:00

Print Shop Window reader Michel Kempeneers was kind enough to send me a link to a fascinating lecture by Mark Bills, former senior curator at the Museum of London's Department of Paintings, Prints and Drawings, on Georgian print shops and graphic satire.

It gives a nice overview of the subject and as provides some interesting insights into the way in which caricature prints were produced and consumed. Highly recommended.

http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/satire-print-shops-and-comic-illustration-in-late-eighteenth-and-nineteenth

Ivan Terebenev (1780 - 1815)

2011-12-29T05:35:00.000-08:00

Russia may not be one of the first nations which springs to mind when one thinks about the production of caricature during the Napoleonic Wars but in the period between 1812 and 1815 Russia experienced a boom in the production of caricature prints and saw the emergence of its first ever cohort of professional caricaturists. The most notable of these was the short-lived Ivan Terebenev (1780 – 1815), whose striking wood-engraved images influenced the works of George Cruikshank, Thomas Rowlandson and Charles Williams.

Terebenev, The Shepherd and the Wolf, 1814
Tsar Alexander grabs the Napoleonic wolf by the scruff of its neck whilst frigtened French generals run into the distance. This design was later copied by Thomas Rowlandson.

Traditional cartoon images in Russia were in the form the lubok, woodcut broadsides that were often decorated with bright simple colouring and which usually dwelt on religious, mythological or natural subject matter. The tsarist authorities were well aware of the influence which visual images had in shaping public opinion and had reacted to the initial emergence of secular political satires in the early 1700s by placing a ban on all forms of personal caricature in print. However, the beginning of the Patriotic War against France in 1812 led to a reversal of this policy. Russian artists were sought out and commissioned to produce patriotic satires and the lubok tradition – fused with the drawing techniques and stylistic conventions of western caricature – was employed with great success to lampoon Russia’s enemies.

Terebenev, Journey of the Exalted Traveller from Warsaw to Paris, 1812
A satire on Napoleon's decision to abandon his troops in Russia and return to Paris in November 1812

Ivan Ivanovich Terebenev was born in St. Petersburg on June 10^th 1780. After studying sculpture at the city’s Imperial Academy of Fine Art and graduating with both gold and silver medals in 1800, he taught at a school in the city of Tver whilst continuing to work as a sculptor producing public monuments, bas reliefs and statues. When Napoleon’s Grand Army invaded Russia in June 1812 Terebenev turned to caricature, selecting the traditional lubok as a suitably patriotic medium, and drew 48 popular anti-French satirical prints over the following three years.

Terebenev, Untitled, 1812
A print which hints darkly at the supposed unwillingness of French forces to take prisoners of war. It shows a group of French soldiers taking away captives who are in fact dummies dressed in Russian uniform.

Terebenev’s prints were initially published by Ivan Glazunov of St Petersburg and distributed via a network of itinerant traders but by the spring of 1813 his designs were also appearing in journals, on sets of fine china and in book form. His designs proved to be so popular that they even prompted a bidding war between various Russian publishing houses that were keen to secure exclusive rights to Terebenev’s work.

An illustration from Azbuka 1812 Goda, otherwise known as Terebenev's ABC. It was published in the form of a child's textbook with patriotic drawings to accompany each letter of the Russian alphabet. The caption for this design reads "Chin up brave Gaul! They'll greet us with pride. That you know. Even though, having lost all, aside stick horses we go".

Williams (?), Boney's Cavalry - A Ruse de Guerre or Bayes's troop in French pay, 1813
A British print based on the Terebenev design above. It suggests that France's losses in Russia have been so heavy that the French cavalry are reduced to riding stick-horses.

Such was the influence of Terebenev’s work that a number of his drawings were even reprinted in London during the Napoleonic Wars. Some were also copied and redrawn for the British market by established British caricaturists. Six of the nine prints which George Cruikshank produced for Hannah Humphrey’s after Russian originals in 1813 can be identified as being based upon Terebenev originals. Thomas Rowlandson and Charles Williams also appear to have executed designs in 1813 and 1814 which are based on designs by Terebenev.

Cruikshank, French Generals Retreating, 1813
One of a number of Terebenev designs which were re-worked by George Cruikshank and published in London during 1813.

Another design from Terebenev's ABC. A group of ragged French soldiers marches back towards France. The caption reads "Time to go home! March! March! Our stay at last is gone. We go with nightcaps whole but with noses, arms and legs gone."

Though Terebenev died in January 1815 his legacy endured. In 1855, during the siege of Sebastopol in the Crimean War, the imperial government reprinted all of his images to inspire Russian troops and residents of the besieged city. Later still, after the invasion of the Soviet Union by Germany in 1941, a collection of anti-Napoleon drawings was published under the title Russia: Britain’s Ally, 1812 – 1942 by art historian F.D. Klingender.

Further reading

A fascinating essay which provides much more detail on Terebenev’s life and work can be found here;

http://www.units.muohio.edu/havighurstcenter/publications/documents/norris.pdf

A digitised version of Terebenev’s most famous work, Azbuka 1812 Goda, can also be found here;

http://www.museum.ru/1812/english/Library/Azbuka/p1.html

The Triumphal Procession of Merry Christmas...

2011-12-24T07:53:00.000-08:00

How would one spend Christmas Day in 1794? One option would have been to pay a visit to William Holland’s print shop on Oxford Street to view an exhibition of the latest caricatures and prints engraved by the likes of Isaac Cruikshank, Richard Newton and George Woodward.

Holland even published a special Christmas print on December 25^th to advertise the exhibition. It was engraved by Richard Newton and shows a group of Bacchanalian figures, triumphantly towing a cart decorated with holly and loaded with festive food and drink, through a crowd of cheering urchins.

Richard Newton, The Triumphal Procession of Merry Christmass to Hospitality Hall, 1794

It’s nice to know that even the Georgians could enjoy making pigs of themselves at Christmas time.

Merry Christmas.

Credulity, Superstition and Fanatacism - The Ghost in Georgian Caricature

2011-12-21T07:02:00.000-08:00

Richard Newton, An Apparition, 1790

The subject of ghosts and the supernatural reoccurred in English caricature periodically throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The ghost story was an established part of both English literature and English folklore in this period and public interest in the supernatural was strengthened both by the intense religiosity of the evangelical Protestant movements which emerged in Britain during the period and by sensationalized reports of actual hauntings which became increasingly common from 1800 onwards.

Most Georgian ghost prints can be grouped into three categories; firstly, there are the political prints, in which ghostly figures are deployed as Shakespearean satirical tropes that embody mournful presentiment or divine retribution.

Anon., The Apparition, or Low C---h Ghost, 1711
A Tory satire attacking non-conforming Protestantism and voicing support for the Test & Corporation Acts which excluded all non-Anglicans from political life. Cromwell's ghost appears (far left) to terrify an evangelical lay preacher with the couplet "all who rebel / with me must dwell".

Thomas Jones, A Voice from the Graves, 1830
A self-consciously Shakespearian scene in which the Duke of Cumberland is confronted by the ghosts of his former valet Joseph Sellis and Baron Graves. The Duke was rumoured to have been involved in the apparent suicide by razor of his valet and was also accused of having driven Baron Graves to commit suicide in a similar fashion by carrying on an affair with his wife.

Secondly, there are the humorous haunting prints in which ghosts pop up to terrify popular figures of fun such as country-bumpkins, Irishmen and priests. Such prints seem to have particularly popular in the early 1790s and George Woodward designed several comedic ghost prints for the young Richard Newton to engrave. Contemporary writers noted that belief in ghosts and other supernatural beings was particularly prevalent in rural England and Woodward’s apparent interest in ghosts may have been a throwback to his youth in Derbyshire.

Richard Newton, Hobgoblin Vaguaries, c.1790

Richard Newton, Tumbling Over a Ghost, 1795

Richard Newton, Resurrection Men, 1792

G.M. Woodward & Isaac Cruikshank, A Collection of Ghosts, 1796

Thirdly, there are the prints which satirised news of actual ghost sightings. The first of these appears in 1762 and refers to the so-called Cock Lane Ghost, a poltergeist-like phenomena which is supposed to have occured in a house in London’s Smithfield district. Residents at the house reported seeing a ghostly apparition ascending the stairs and heard scratching sounds and loud knocking coming from inside the walls of one of the bedrooms. Several séances took place at Cock Lane and it was widely believed that the ghost was that of a former tenant who had been poisoned by her husband. The story attracted so much public attention that Cock Lane became thronged with spectators and the civic authorities felt obliged to act. A committee, which included Doctor Samuel Johnson amongst its members, was established to investigate the strange goings-on in Cock Lane and lost no time in proclaiming that the whole incident was an elaborate hoax being perpetrated by the owner of the house and his eldest daughter.

Oliver Goldsmith?, English Credulity, or the Invisible Ghost of Cock Lane, 1762.
This print presents a condensed summary of events at Cock Lane. After several weeks the haunting was proven to be a hoax and the perpetrators were fined, placed in the pillory and then imprisoned.

William Hogarth, Credulity, Superstition and Fanatacism. A Medley, 1762
A Hogarthian critique of the English fascination with folklore, superstition and the supernatural. Hogarth mockingly suggests that the supposed manifestation of the Cock Lane Ghost was as supernatural as a door knocker and shows the perpetrators of the fraud cradling the wooden blocks which were used to make the knocking and scratching noises which were associated with the 'ghost'.

The subject of ghosts resurfaced again in 1803, when stories about the various spirits that were said to haunt the villages and byways at the edges of the City became popular. Chief amongst these were the reports of the spirit of a man, wrapped in a white shroud, who appeared to confront startled travellers making nocturnal journeys between Hammersmith and London. One popular rumour was that he had assaulted a woman while she was walking past Hammersmith’s chapel on a winter evening. The ghost grasped the woman in his arms, whereupon she fainted and, according to contemporary accounts, died two days later from shock.

Edmund Scott, The Hammersmith Ghost, 1804

The haunting of Hammersmith came to public attention in January 1804 when an exciseman named Francis Smith managed to shoot and kill a bricklayer, Thomas Millwood, while out searching for the ghost. Millwood was walking home late in the evening after a visit to his parents’ house; wearing his working garb of dusty white waistcoat and trousers, he was mistaken for the ghost in the dimly lit rural lane where he met Smith. The killing made newspaper headlines nationally and, while Smith was convicted of Millwood’s murder, public sympathy led the home secretary to rescind his death sentence and reduce his punishment to a year’s imprisonment.

The events of 1803 and 1804 were merely the first in a series of ghostly appearances that were to plague the capital in the early 19th century. In 1811, for instance, newspapers carried reports of a ghost that was apparently haunting Kensington, then a village on the fringes of London. The Times claimed that, when caught, this apparition turned out to be the son of a respectable gentleman and, rather than turn him in to the magistrates, his captors pitched him into the nearest horse trough.

These ghost prints give an interesting insight into a preoccupation with death and the afterlife which would eventually blossom into the Victorian craze for spiritualism. They also hint at some of the underlying class tension that existed in Georgian Britain as, more often than not, the prints reflect the sceptical view of the educated middle classes and mock the credulity of the working class interest in ghosts and other forms of folklore.

James Gillray, So Skiffy Skipt On..., 1800

2011-12-20T03:32:00.001-08:00

A couple of months ago I was browsing around an auction room in the North of England when I happened to come across a large nineteenth century scrap album. Collecting small prints and paper ephemera was a fairly common pastime in the Victorian-era and such albums commonly crop up in auctions and can usually be purchased about £50. After leafing through a dozen or so pages which were covered in a mixture of steel engraved landscapes, wildlife prints and cut-outs from Victorian fashion magazines, I was surprised to find half a dozen Gillray’s pasted into the back pages of the album.

Usually, if an auction house lists an original item by Gillray in its online catalogue then there will be a rush of bids from dealers and wealthy collectors which can often push the price of a single print up above £500. In this case the auctioneer had simply listed the item as a ‘19^th century scrap album of assorted prints’. Evidently the contents of the album had been overlooked and on the day of the auction I managed to buy the lot with my opening bid.

One of the prints from this album was Gillray’s So Skiffy Skipt On With His Wonted Grace, a personal satire on Sir Lumley Skeffington which was published in 1800. Skeffington was the only son of a wealthy family of merchant bankers and by his late teens he was already considered to be something of a fashion icon and trend-setter. He was soon admitted into the so-called ‘Carleton House set’, a collection of fashionable young fops who clustered around the equally asinine Prince of Wales, and asked to advise Prince George in all matters relating to dress and deportment.

Skeffington was 28 when this satire was published and had already reached the pinnacle of London society. Gillray captures his sharp, slightly sallow, features and the lavish yellow, white and blue outfits on which his reputation and fame had been built. He is also shown skipping which is presumably a mocking reference to the affected mannerisms which gentlemen dandies chose to adopt.

This is THE THING... A (Very) Rough Guide to Printmaking

2011-12-18T14:42:00.000-08:00

G. Cruikshank, The Political House That Jack Built, 1819
The printing press as defender of the inalienable rights and liberties of Englishmen

I suppose that this blog has focused a lot on the subject and content of satirical prints, or the people that produced them, but has paid little attention to the question of how they were actually produced. Now, I am by no means an expert on the history of printing but I thought it might be useful to share my cursory knowledge of eighteenth and early nineteenth century printmaking techniques, just to provide us with a bit of context and an explanation of what words like ‘lithograph’ or ‘plate mark’ actually mean.

During the 1700s and early 1800s there were essentially three major mediums for print making: intaglio printing onto copperplate using a combination of engraving, etching and aquatint, lithography and woodblock engraving. A summary of each is given below;

Engraving

Engraving is a form of intaglio printing, meaning that the image is made by applying ink to the engraved surface of a copperplate. The engraver uses a tool called burin, which is essentially a small metal rod with a sharpened point, to etch v-shaped grooves into the soft surface of the copper. The plate would then be covered in ink and wiped clean to ensure that the only ink left on the plate was that which had been deposited in the sunken lines which had been etched by the engraver. After that the plate would be fitting into a press and paper, which had been dampened to facilitate the transfer of the ink, was placed underneath it. Considerable pressure had to be applied in order to ensure that the image transferred from the plate to the paper and this usually resulted in the creation of an indentation, or ‘plate mark’ being left around the borders of the image.

As well as straightforward line engraving, artists could also apply tonal qualities to a print by using a tool known as a ‘rocker’ to roughen parts of the surface of the plate and create dotted stippling, hatching, or cross hatching which would give the impression of depth or shade when inked and pressed onto paper. This technique is known as mezzotint.

Copper was used for engraving because it was a relatively soft metal to engrave upon. However, the drawback of this was that copperplates would wear after being repeatedly pressed; eventually the engraved lines would become too shallow to retain ink and the engraved image would start to disappear. Each plate could probably produce no more than a few hundred prints before it had to be discarded and the image re-engraved onto a new piece of copper. The additional time and expense required to do this explains why more durable printing materials, such as stone, wood and eventually steel, began to replace the old copperplates during the nineteenth century.

Engraving was also a physically demanding technique as it required the engraver to skilfully apply a consistent degree of force in order to ensure an even line. The young George Cruikshank noted that a thirty five year career as an engraver had taken its toll on James Gillray and that even when he was not working his hand would “pulsate electrically [and was] always moving as if in the act of painting”.

Etching

Etching is also a form of intaglio printing but is one in which recesses are created in the surface of a copperplate by using chemicals rather than the hand. The plate would be coated with an acid-resistant resin; the artist then took an etching needle and scraped the lines of the image out of the resin, leaving the exposed copperplate visible underneath. The whole plate was then placed in an acid bath which would corrode any exposed metal work and leave an indentation which could then be inked and pressed onto paper. This process could be repeated several times if the artist wished to vary the depth and thickness of specific lines within a particular image.

W. Hogarth, The Lottery, 1724
A classic Hogarth satire which combines etching, engraving and mezzotint.

Aquatint

Aquatint is similar to etching in that it is based around the use of acid to alter the surface of a copperplate. However, during the aquatinting process artists would coat their plate with resin and then make small pits in the resin which would allow the acid to partially corrode the surface of the plate. Once this raised surface was covered in ink it would produce a mottled effect which was commonly used to give printed images greater tone and depth.

G.M. Woodward, Every Body Out of Town, 1800
Aquatinting has been used to produce the shadowing and other tonal qualities in this print.

Lithography

Lithographic printing in Germany during the late 1790s and within twenty years was slowly beginning to supersede copperplate engraving as the printing medium of choice amongst satirical artists in both Britain and North America. Lithographic printing was a complex process but was fundamentally based around the fact that that water and grease repel one another. Artists were able to draw directly onto a flat stone surface with a greasy ink which was attracted to the dry stone surface and which, in turn, would attracted the printing ink, while the background absorbed water. The area of the surface that was damp repelled the printing ink.

Although the process of producing a lithograph was technically complex it required far less time and effort than older forms of copperplate and woodblock engraving. Stone slabs were also far cheaper and more durable than copperplates which meant that publishers could produce thousands, as opposed to hundreds, of images from a single plate. The economies of scale associated with lithographic printing meant that publishing for a middle and working class audiences became financially viable for the first time.

H. Daumier, Magot de la Chine, 1834
In England the rise of lithographic printing coincided with the end of what is commonly referred to as the 'Golden Age of Caricature'. From 1832 onwards British satirists began to abandon caricature in favour of a more realistic and illustrative drawing style which was reflective of the increasingly staid tastes of the emerging Victorian middle classes. In France however, artists such as Daumier and Delacroix used lithography to produce innovative, daring and genuinely influential political satires. Daumieur's insistence on continually portraying King Louis Philippe as a fat and slightly stupid figure, played an important role in undermining the image of the July Monarchy in France.

Woodblock Engraving

Woodblock engraving had been around in some form or other in Asia since antiquity and was widely used across Western Europe from the fifteenth century onwards. However, woodcut engraving techniques were considered to be too crude to produce high quality images and were not commonly used in eighteenth century Britain until the Newcastle engraver, Thomas Bewick (1753 – 1828), proved that a burin could be used to carve detailed images into the grain end of hard boxwood.

The first notable instance of woodblock engraving being used to create satirical prints came in 1819 with the publication of William Hone’s pamphlet The Political House That Jack Built. Hone asked his friend George Cruikshank to provide illustrations for the pamphlet and the artist chose to use engrave onto wood in order to minimise production costs and thus ensure that the finished pamphlet could be sold to as wide an audience as possible.

Woodblock engraving remained in vogue as a result of the ongoing pamphlet war which took place between radicals and loyalists between the Peterloo in 1819 and the funeral of Queen Caroline in 1821. It continued to serve as the medium of choice for satirists and illustrators wishing to reach working audiences throughout the 1830s and 1840s. C.J. Grant’s series of 131 prints published under the title The Political Drama offers an example of what is perhaps the most ambitious use of woodblock engraving in the production of nineteenth century graphic satire.

C.J. Grant, The Political Drama No. 112, c.1835
An extremely rare coloured version of a print from Grant's woodblock engraved Political Drama series

Jacques Rosbif rendant sa visite – The English in French caricature 1814-16

2011-12-14T10:36:00.000-08:00

Anon, L'Apres Souper Des Anglais à Paris, Ou L'Auberge Pleine, 1815
"The English after supper, Or the full inn"
The classic and enduring image of British men abroad - A group of heavily inebriated Britons is gathered around the table of an inn. The four central figures give every indication of having drunk themselves into a stupor, whilst one of their number turns away from the table to vomit into his own hat, another capers around drunkenly in the background. Behind them stands an angry French innkeeper who points to a clock which indicates that it is ten-to-six in the morning.

The history of print publishing in France was markedly different to that of Great Britain during the eighteenth century as state controls over the production and content of printed materials were never seriously relaxed in France. On the eve of the French Revolution the kinds of scurrilous political and social satires which had become commonplace across the Channel were still confined to the illegal margins of French print culture.

The coming of the Revolution in 1789 effectively kick-started the production of caricatures and graphic satires in France and from the early 1790s onwards Parisian publishers and booksellers began to employ anonymous engravers to produce prints to meet the demand caused by an upsurge in political interest and activism. These early caricaturists borrowed many of their ideas from their English counterparts but developed their own unique style which was heavily influenced by the classicism of Jacques-Louis David and the pre-Revolutionary tradition for engraved fashion plates.

Stereotypical representations of the British were just as popular and enduring in French caricature as the image of the emaciated, effeminate, Frenchman was in Britain. The stereotype of the English which came to be developed in French caricature during the early 1800s was in many ways similar to that which would be applied to Americans in the Twentieth Century – The economic and political ascendancy of Britain was given a grudging degree of tacit recognition but qualified with the presentation of English people as bumpkin-like parvenus who were lacking in sophistication and culture. The Englishman in French caricature was therefore invariably depicted as a sort of Hanoverian lager lout who was drunk, overweight, badly dressed and ill-mannered.

The end of the Napoleonic Wars brought a flood of English tourists into France and resulted in a veritable explosion in the number of satirical prints which aimed to capitalise on Gallic resentment of the foreign interlopers. A selection of the vast number of Anglophobic prints produced in France between 1814 and 1816 is show below.

Anon. Divertissement Des Anglais En Belgique, 1815
"English entertainment in Belgium"
A group of English officers cavort drunkenly with some prostitutes whilst the establishment's owner leaves the room carrying a large bag of money. The Napoleonic equivalent of 'over paid, over sexed and over here'.

Anon., L'après-dinée des Anglais - Scènes Anglaises dessinées à Londres, par un français prisonnier de guerre, 1814
"The English after dinner - English scenes drawn in London by a French prisoner of war"

Anon., Les Dames Anglais Après-Diné..., 1814
"English ladies after dinner"
A companion to the print shown above. The English men remain behind in the dining room after dinner to indulge in yet more drinking whilst the English women are dismissed to another room where they sit, looking bored and neglected, sipping tea.

Gérard-Fontallard, Jacques Rosbif Rendant... Sa Visite, 1815
"Jack Roastbeef Returning from his visit"
A grotesquely caricatured Englishman is being carried home from his visit to France by a porter. His drab clothing and small hat reflects popular criticisms of English fashions.

Roehn, Amusements des Anglais à Londres, 1814
"English pastimes in London"
French observers often commented on the supposedly melancholic nature of the English which, it was suggested, was a by-product of gloomy British weather. This print suggests that the English were a nation of manic-depressives. On the far left a man laughs as he hangs himself from a tree whilst another smiles and points a pistol down his own throat. In the background another Englishman is seen hurling himself off a bridge. Two other figures sit on the right. One has passed-out after drowning his sorrows in with porter, whilst the other laughs manaically as he reads from a copy of Edward Young's tragic poem 'Night Thoughts'.

The Scourge at Brandeis University

2011-12-13T02:05:00.000-08:00

Brandeis University Library has just added a nice little biography of the satirical magazine The Scourge to its website. There's also a link to an archive of digitised copies of the Scourge which are available to view and download via archive.org.

http://brandeisdigitallibrary.blogspot.com/2011/03/scourge-or-monthly-expositor-of.html

George Cruikshank, "Interior View of The House of God", The Scourge... , No.II, 1811

A satire on the radical millenarian London preacher Elias Carpenter which was published in the second issue of the Scourge in August 1811. Cruikshank inserted a personal joke into the print by placing himself, his brother Isaac, their friend William Hone and the Scourge's publisher William Jones amongst the congregation (they are the four figures standing at the bottom left-hand corner of the image).

Isaac Cruikshank, General Swallow Destroying the French Army, 1799

2011-12-10T11:46:00.000-08:00

I finally managed to add a copy of Isaac Cruikshank’s stunningly grotesque General Swallow Destroying the French Army to my collection this week. It’s a satirical celebration of the crushing defeats which the Austro-Russian forces under the command of the Russian General Suvorov inflicted upon the French armies in Northern Italy during the first half of 1799. Cruikshank’s representation of Suvorov bears no resemblance to the actual man, instead the Russian commander is transformed into a man-eating ogre who skewers and then mercilessly devours the hapless French legions. The caption underneath reads; Genl. Swallow Destroying the French Army - talk of Gullivers carrying off fifty ships at once, why it was nothing to him!

I find this print fascinating for a number of reasons; Firstly, it is simply a visually striking image and is arguably amongst the finest satirical prints the elder Cruikshank ever produced. The level of horror and graphic violence in this print almost matches Gillray at his most blood-curdling and serves to remind the viewer of the ways in which satirical prints often transgressed against the accepted conventions of eighteenth century art.

Secondly, the print is also a great example of the use of the ‘bugaboo’ as a satirical device in English caricature*. Historians who study caricature in the Georgian era have identified the deployment of monster-like bugaboos as a means by which satirists could anthropomorphise a foreign threat to the nation. It could also be argued that the bugaboo, which according to Francis Gross' dictionary of Georgian slang meant something to “scare a baby”, was also employed by satirists to as a means of mocking external threats which were more perceived than real, or which could be seen off if met with sufficient political or martial vigour.

Thirdly, the representation of a victorious Russian general as a man-eating giant tells us something about underlying attitudes towards Russia in Britain during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In the years leading up to the outbreak of the Revolutionary Wars Britain had become increasingly cognisant of and alarmed by the emergence of Russia as a Great Power. This print suggests that, even though Britain and Russia were allies, Britons continued to view the Russians with a degree of unease throughout the Napoleonic Wars.

Finally, the print also provides an insight into the political views of the famous London publisher S.W. Fores. Fores owned a successful print emporium in Piccadilly which retained high-profile satirists like Cruikshank and counted various members of London’s high-society amongst its clientele but he was also a friend of the radicals and a closet supporter of the French Revolution. Almost five months after commissioning Isaac Cruikshank to produce General Swallow..., Fores paid John Cawse to engrave a sequel entitled The great swallow all!!! Disgorging, or, French bullie too hot for the bears stomach. This print was issued in October 1799, following series of crushing reversals for the allied armies in Northern Italy. It depicts Suvoroff’s avatar vomiting forth a mass of ribbons and medals which represent both the various titles held by the Russian general and the names of various battles he had won throughout his military career. He says "Curse this Massena he has Given me such a Dose that I shall throw up all that I have Taken these Gewgaws are so loath to come up that I verily think they will Ckoak me!!! Damn your Reverence." The French general Massena stands next to Suvoroff and says "Why General this French Ragout does not agree with your Stomach Throw Up a little more, Aye - pay him the same respect you would to the Emperor himself".

* For other examples of the bugaboo in caricature see B.M. catalogue refs; 8086, 8102 and 9005.

The Origins of The Freeborn Englishman

2011-12-01T14:47:00.000-08:00

The 1819 print A Free born Englishman... is probably one of George Cruikshank’s most well-known satires and with good reason - It perfectly encapsulates the atmosphere of economic depression and simmering political resentment which hung over large parts of England in the years immediately following the end of the Napoleonic Wars. If a decent copy of this print came up at auction today then you’d probably have to expect to part with a considerable chunk of change in order to take it home with you.

However, few people realise that Cruikshank didn’t actually come up with the idea for this print and that the ironic motif of the ‘Freeborn Englishman’ bound in chains with his jaws padlocked together had actually been designed by an earlier generation of radical political satirists in the 1790s.

The caricature below is the earliest known example of the Freeborn Englishman design. The print carries no publication line, which is not unusual given that publishers were often reluctant to put their names to material which could be construed as libellous or seditious, but almost certainly dates to either 1794 or 1795. It refers to legislation which was passed in those years to suspend habeas corpus, curtail the right of free assembly and widen the legal definition of treason to include practically any form of opposition to the monarchy and the political establishment. It is signed ‘T. French’ but the British Museum catalogue suggests that this was pseudonym and there are no other records of prints by a similarly named artist in any of the major catalogues of British graphic satires.

The caricaturist may have had some connection with the ultra-radical author and bookseller Thomas Spence, as Spence published a second version of this print in 1796. The design was also used repeatedly on a number of the stamped coins, tokens and medals which Spence produced to distribute amongst his acolytes and followers amongst London’s working classes.

Metal tokens produced by the radical publisher Thomas Spence. Spence produced tokens like these as a means of circulating radical political messages and imagery amongst an audience which was often too poor to afford printed materials. Both designs feature the figure of the 'Freeborn Englishman'. The reverse of the top token contains an image of a man being press-ganged into military service against his will whilst the bottom token carries an image of the radical orator John Thelwall.

Interestingly, a curate’s note in the British Museum catalogue attributes the original design to Isaac Cruikshank. I’m not sure I see too many similarities between this piece and Isaac Cruikshank’s other works and by the mid-1790s the elder Cruikshank was being retained to produce caricatures for Samuel Fores respectable West End print shop and presumably would not have needed to chase cheap commissions from the likes of Thomas Spence. However, the fact that the image of the Freeborn Englishman seems to have lodged in the mind of George Cruikshank may indeed suggest that his father played a role in producing the original version of this print.

George Cruikshank first used a modified form of the Freeborn Englishman design in this 1813 print. The British Museum catalogue suggests that in this instance the figure of the 'Englishman' is actually Leigh Hunt a radical publisher who was imprisoned for libelling the Prince Regent.

The Looking Glass (1825 ~ 1839)

2011-11-29T11:23:00.000-08:00

The front page of the first edition of the Glasgow Looking Glass, 1825

The 1820s and 1830s were a period of transition for London’s print trade and English caricature in general. The introduction of lithography allowed publishing houses to do away with the expensive and timely process of copper-plate engravings and produce scores of smaller cruder illustrations to feed the demand for visual images coming from the newly affluent middle and industrial working classes. The subject matter of caricature also had to change to meet the demands of a rapidly diversifying market and consequently socio-cultural or purely aesthetic subjects began to replace the purely political and personal satires of the high Georgian-era.

One sign of how caricature began to change was the emergence of ‘magazines’ which contained several smaller lithographed or woodblock engraved prints published across three or four pages or on one large sheet. Retail prices varied depending on whether the magazine was purchased plain or coloured and on the audience it was aimed at – Those produced by the more fashionable print shops of London’s West End could cost as much as six shillings whilst a cheaper magazine, such as C.J. Grant’s Everybody’s Album and Caricature Magazine, could be purchased uncoloured for sixpence.

Given that the concept of the caricature magazine were rooted in the economics of thrift it is perhaps not too surprising that they originated in Scotland. In 1825 the English artist and caricaturist William Heath moved to Glasgow in order to execute a commission to paint a number of landscape scenes in oils and whilst there he sought to resume publishing caricatures, presumably as a means of generating some additional income. Heath must have realised pretty quickly that the market for prints in Glasgow was likely to be much smaller than that in the Capital and that it would not sustain the kind of elaborate copperplate designs he was used to producing for his wealthy London audiences. The solution was therefore to offer his Scottish customers more value for money – by providing them with several illustrations for a shilling instead of just one and presenting caricature in a format they would recognise by presenting it like a newspaper.

A self-portrait of the caricaturist William Heath taken from issue 14 of the Northern Looking Glass

The first fortnightly edition of Heath’s Glasgow Looking Glass appeared on 11^th June 1825 and four more issues were produced under this title before the magazine was renamed the Northern Looking Glass in order to reflect the fact that it commented on events taking place across Scotland. The last edition of the magazine appeared on the 3^rd April 1826, shortly before Heath left Glasgow and returned to London.

The Northern Looking Glass No.6. 1825. The magazine focused on Scottish news and social satire about life in Scotland during the mid-1820s. The sixth edition of the Northern Looking Glass featured a series of prints about the scourge of 'resurrection men' and the links between grave-robbing and Scotland's schools of medicine.

Heath reverted back to the production of traditional single-plate satirical prints upon his return to the Metropolis in 1826, however the publisher Thomas McLean appears to have encouraged him to revisit the magazine format in 1830 and the pair published the first issue of a new magazine, now simply called The Looking Glass, in April of that year. It seems fairly clear that McLean was probably the primary force behind the new magazine as William Heath abandoned the project after completing the seventh edition in July 1830. The historian Richard Pound has suggested that Heath and McLean may have squabbled over production techniques, with the canny publisher preferring the cheaper method of lithography and Heath preferring to stick to traditional methods of engraving. This is entirely possible, although a simpler explanation may simply be that by the middle of 1830 William Heath’s career as a satirist was nearing its creative and commercial peak and that he simply did not have the time or inclination to devote himself to producing a fortnightly caricature magazine.

The first edition of The Looking Glass published in London, 1830

McLean immediately drafted in the up-and-coming artist Robert Seymour to replace Heath. Seymour, who is now best remembered for his illustrations in The Pickwick Papers, took over from issue 8 and worked with the periodical until his tragic death in April 1836. Seymour’s presence at the Looking Glass resulted for short time in the page being built up from a mass of small images, but it seems likely that McClean wanted to take the periodical in another direction closer to the old style of large satirical political images. He re-titled the magazine McLean’s Monthly Sheet of Caricatures or the Looking Glass, and may well have exercised closer control over Seymour’s choice of subjects, perhaps drawing in amateurs to suggest topics. Seymour worked on at the magazine until 1836, having left Figaro in London acrimoniously in 1834. He was replaced by Henry Heath, who showed much more interest in city life than in traditional political subjects.

A later edition of the magazine with illustrations by Robert Seymour

The Looking Glass was relatively long lived for such an expensive periodical was extremely influential in establishing seriality as the principle mode for the publication of caricature, far outselling its contemporary rivals like C.J. Grant’s Everybody’s Album and Bell’s Life in London, and making the case for the multi-image page as a proper medium for comic art.

Dernier Effort Des Jacobins, c.1792

2011-11-23T02:15:00.000-08:00

Eighteenth century caricaturists were by no means subtle when it came to portraying bodily functions in their humour. Generally speaking it was the English, then as now, who seemed to excel in crudities and who elevated fart jokes to something approaching a national sport. However this small French print manages to give some of the English caricaturists a run for their money when it comes to sheer boorishness.

It carries no publication line but was probably produced sometime between October 1791 and August 1792 by a supporter of the Feuillant faction in the French Legislative Assembly. The Feuillant’s were the moderate faction within revolutionary France. They wanted to establish a constitutional monarchy and were opposed to the radical republicanism of the Jacobins.

The title of the print translates as The Jacobins Last Effort and refers to the Jacobin’s repeated calls for the disestablishment of the French royal family. The print depicts the Jacobin faction as a donkey which is kicking its hind legs at a statue of Louis XVI whilst simultaneously belching and breaking wind. The buildings to the right of the scene appear similar to the entrance to the Jacobin Club on the Rue Saint-Honoré in Paris.

Sophistication française!

C.J. Grant, Honour and Glory for John Bull, 1838

2011-11-21T13:18:00.000-08:00

I came across a newspaper clipping from 1838 which contained a small satirical woodcut by the massively under-appreciated Charles Jameson Grant. Grant was active from the late 1820s until the early 1840s and produced unrelentingly radical political satires for an audience which consisted of the disenfranchised British working classes. It is likely that this clipping was originally taken from one of the many illegal unstamped newspapers which were produced in London during the 1830s.

The picture shows a fraught looking John Bull, dressed in military uniform, being shoved into a boat by the Prime Minister Lord Melbourne and the Colonial Secretary Lord Russell, who are both urging him to sail to Canada to put down the rebellion against British rule. As Russell extols the virtues of fighting for Britain's interests and overseas property, Melbourne slyly picks John Bull’s pocket.

The reluctant Mr Bull says: “... I’d rather let fighting alone in this puddle-in-a-storm affair – as to property, I see very little in rotten timber and cabbage fields – I’ve more valuables at home to exert my energies for – so let mercenaries fight for Canada, who are not English, and are too lazy to work, except for Whigs, Tories and plunder.”

I think this is an interesting print because we tend to assume that the Victorian-era was a time when patriotic sentiment ran high and everyone in Britain was very gung-ho about empire building. What Grant is suggesting here is that the Empire actually meant very little to most ordinary Britons, that it existed largely for the benefit of a wealthy political and mercantile class and that it certainly wasn’t worth dying for.

Thomas Rowlandson, The Fall of Dagon..., 1784

2011-11-20T13:19:00.000-08:00

Thomas Rowlandson, The Fall of Dagon – Or Rare News for Leadenhall Street, Published 4^th January 1784 by W. Humphrey

An early political satire by Rowlandson which reflects on the collapse of the Fox-North Coalition following the final defeat of the East India Bill by the House of Lords in December 1783.

Charles James Fox had introduced the East India Bill to Parliament and presented it as a measure designed to reduce corruption by placing the appointment of East India Company officials under government control. However, when the list of newly appointed East India Company Commissioners was produced, it rapidly became clear that Fox simply intended to replace one form of corrupt cronyism with another and that the new Directors of the Company would all be close supporters of Fox, Lord North and the Whigs.

King George III, who hated Fox, seized on the Bill as an opportunity to ditch the Whigs and replace them with a Tory administration and agents were duly sent forth to inform members of the House of Lords that the King would consider any man voting in favour of the Bill as a personal enemy. George then used the inevitable defeat of the East India Bill as an excuse for firing Fox’s Coalition government and asking William Pitt the Younger to take up the office of Prime Minister.

Rowlandson depicts the Fox-North Coalition in the form of the shattered idol of the pagan god Dagan, a biblical reference which would have been understood by Rowlandson’s wealthy and well educated clientele. The statue has fallen from a pedestal marked ‘Broad Bottom’ (an eighteenth century slang term for coalition ministries) and both its hands and head have been severed. The statue has a Janus-like head with the faces of both Fox and Lord North.

In the distance is Tower Hill, the traditional place of execution of enemies of the Crown, where a crowd has gathered around a scaffold on which a man in being beheaded.

Beneath the title is engraved;

And behold Dagon was fallen upon his face to the ground before the ark of the Lord & the head of Dagon and both the Palms of his were cut off upon the threshold.

A striking and early example of Rowlandson’s work in the genre of political satire and which is also notable for the delicate use of line and stipple engraving techniques.

Gillray and English Pottery

2011-11-15T07:08:00.000-08:00

During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the consumption of caricature and visual satire wasn’t just limited to print. Popular designs by well-known London caricaturists were often copied and adapted for use in Britain’s flourishing pottery and porcelain industries.

These images show an example of how Gillray’s 1799 print Independence has been reworked as a decorative transfer for a creamwear baluster jug. The image on side of the jug is a copy of Gillray’s portrait of the eccentric and outspokenly patriotic MP Thomas Tyrwhitt Jones of Carrighova in Denbighshire, whilst the text from the print has been copied out in full on the jug’s verso.

I am an Independent Man, Sir, - & I don’t care That, who hears me say so – I don’t like Wooden Shoes! No sir, neither French Wooden Shoes, no nor English Wooden Shoes, neither!.........my motto is ‘Independence & Old England’ – and That! For all the rest of the World! There, That! – That!, That! That! – That!”

“The Gate of Pandemonium” – The Crown and Anchor tavern, radicalism and English caricature

2011-11-14T11:41:00.000-08:00

I have been present at all sorts of political meetings…but never was it my good fortune to witness so brilliant a display of democracy as that which shone forth at the Crown and Anchor on Tuesday night. I often despaired of Radicalism before; I will never despair again after what I witnessed on that occasion…Four thousand democrats, at least, were at the meeting. The immense room of the Crown and Anchor was crowded to overflowing, several hundreds stood outside on the corridor and stairs or went away for want of accommodation - London Mercury, 4 March 1837

The Crown and Anchor tavern was one of the major landmarks of late-Hanoverian London. In the period of popular political discontent which stretched from the 1790s through to the Chartist movement of the 1840s, the tavern’s name became so closely associated with anti-establishmentarian politics that the term ‘Crown and Anchor’ became synonymous with radical political beliefs. This is perhaps nowhere more evident than in political caricatures of the period, where the tavern is frequently used as a backdrop to, or metaphor for, popular radicalism and subversive revolutionary activities. This post will look at the way in which the Crown and Anchor was represented in political prints and try to give some thoughts as to what this tells us about English politics in the period.

The Crown and Anchor was located in the Strand - one of the main thoroughfares of eighteenth century London which provided access between the wealthier neighbourhoods of the West End and the poorer, more densely populated, areas around the old City of London. The title deeds for the tavern can be traced back as far as 1731 when it existed as a relatively modest and respectable drinking establishment.

The term ‘tavern’ conjures up images of a typically snug English pub; however this would a wholly inaccurate means of describing the Crown and Anchor. Following extensive refurbishment in the late 1780s the tavern stood at four stories in height and stretched an entire city block from Arundel Street to Milford Lane.

A 1753 view of the Strand in London. The original Crown & Anchor can be seen on the near right of the print. The tavern's swinging sign is clearly visible above the doorway.

Despite the immense size of the tavern, the front facade, which faced Arundel Street, was modest in appearance with the proportion and balance typified by Georgian architecture. Seven windows on each floor of the four-storey building were symmetrically aligned—the ground floor distinguished from the upper floors by arched windows and rusticated stonework. Iron balconies, each with their own iron lamps, dressed the windows of the first floor. Pilasters intersected each of the windows and stretched the height of the building. The whole effect provided an understated face to the streetscape. The tavern’s principle entrance faced Arundel Street, and the subtle restraint evident in the facade was reflected by the narrow passageway that dissected two Strand shopfronts.

A mid-Victorian print which shows how the Crown & Anchor's Arundel Street frontage would have appeared after the renovation of the late 1780s.

Entering the building from Arundel Street, visitors were greeted by an elegant foyer, paved with stone and dominated by four large Doric columns, which supported a gallery above. The entry was light and spacious, effected by a large lantern that hung overhead. The tavern’s considerable kitchen facilities were located on the ground floor, providing convenient access to the aptly named Large Dining Room, which could seat upwards of 500 guests. The room was simply but elegantly appointed. Enriched carved cornices circled the ceiling, which featured two large moulded centrepieces of carved flowers supporting the room’s chandeliers. Two substantial fireplaces framed with marble and wood dressings provided winter warmth. Festoons (carved chains of flowers, leaves or ribbons hung in curves) cascaded from the walls of an arched recess at the western end of the room, with the walls adorned with a frieze of eight panels.

A prodigious staircase constructed of stone, framed by continuous ornamental iron rails and topped with mahogany handrails, led to the upper floors. Ascending the staircase to the second floor, visitors to the tavern could momentarily catch their breath in the small second-floor lobby—described as a ‘large well hole’, lit both by natural light drawn into the space by two conical skylights and, in the evenings, by a huge lantern raised six feet, six inches (1.98 m) high. The lobby provided an area for guests to assemble before making their entrance into the Crown and Anchor’s premium asset: the ‘Great Assembly Room’. The room was one of the largest available in the metropolis, measuring an immense 2969 sq ft (276 sq m) and was reportedly capable of hosting concerts, balls and banquets for at least 2000 people

The Crown and Anchor had long served as an outlet for the cultural and social energies of well-to-do Londoners. During the course of the eighteenth century it had played host to the Academy of Ancient Music and the Academy of Musicians, of which Handel was a founding member, as well as the Society of Musicians. It was the customary dining venue for fellows of the Royal Society, who would retire to the tavern’s dining room following their meetings. It was the birthplace of the Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain, and meetings of the foundation organisations, which would later combine as the British Medical Association, were also held in its rooms. The tavern also developed an association with the diffusion of knowledge, hosting both scientific and literary lectures throughout the late eighteenth century and into the nineteenth century. It was a key metropolitan establishment for London’s literary elite as a venue for sociability and conviviality, and for the lectures by such literary greats as Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Hazlitt.

The earliest reference to the tavern in a satirical print comes from 1771, when it was identified as the meeting place of a Freemasons lodge which had admitted the famous French transvestite, the Chevalier D’Eon, as a member.

Anon., The Discovery, or, Female Free-Masonry, 1771

However the tavern’s image was to be defined by its political affiliations. During the 1790s the Crown and Anchor became almost synonymous with the figure of Charles James Fox and his clique of supporters. Whig Grandees gathered at the tavern on the 10^th October each year to celebrate the anniversary of Fox’s 1780 election victory and then again on January 13^thto mark his birthday. After Fox’s death in 1806, the radical MP Sir Francis Burdett became the Crown and Anchor’s most prominent patron and the tavern was co-opted to act as an informal election campaign headquarters for his followers.

Three of the earliest prints to feature the Crown and Anchor evolved out of one seminal event held at the tavern in 1791: a celebration to mark the anniversary of the storming of the Bastille. British reformers initially welcomed the Revolution with much enthusiasm and news that they were publicly celebrating the tumultuous events across the Channel caused a shudder amongst conservative London and prompted a flurry of public commentary, including contributions from graphic satirists. The publicity surrounding the impending event was sufficient to induce William Dent’s graphic response, Revolution Anniversary or Patriotic Incantations. The print is set inside an amorphous space, though it is given a spatial grounding by the addition of an invitation titled ‘Crown and Anchor’, which sits curled at the bottom left corner of the print. The walls are dominated by four posters that link the organisers of the 1791 meeting with historic English rebels: ‘WAT TYLER’ depicts the famous English leader of the Peasants’ Revolt in 1381 and ‘JACK CADE’, the leader of the Kentish rebellion against Henry VI in 1450, appears alongside present-day reformer and Dissenting minister Dr Joseph Towers, shown attacking the crown and the sceptre with an axe in the poster titled ‘REPUBLICISM’. The fourth wall poster, titled ‘FANATICISM’, depicts a winged and cloven-footed devil setting fire to a church, while in the foreground prominent Whig reformers Joseph Priestley, Charles James Fox and Richard Brinsley Sheridan join Towers in a pagan-like dance around a cauldron as they summon both ‘French Spirits’ and that of radical ideologue Thomas Paine: “Oh! choice Spirit of dauntless Paine. Make, make our Cauldron blaze again.” Imps play music around the base of the steaming boiler and in the top left a demon sets fire to a church as it treads upon a bishop’s mitre.

Dent, Revolution Anniversary or Patriotic Incantations, 1791.

The satanic connotations of the Crown and Anchor milieu are evident again in James Gillray’s response to news of the July celebrations. His Alecto and her train, at the Gate of Pandemonium…or…The Recruiting Sargeant enlisting John Bull into the Revolution Service was published on 9 July 1791, immediately prior to the meeting at the tavern. The central figure in the scene is Alecto, one of the three grotesque goddesses (or Furies) of vengeance in Greek mythology, known for inflicting famines and pestilences. The scene is set outside the Crown and Anchor - designated in the print as the ‘Gate of Pandemonium’, referring to the capital of hell depicted in John Milton’s Paradise Lost. Smoke and flames bellow ominously from the doors of the tavern while demons circle within.

Gillray, The Gates of Pandemonium..., 1791.

Gillray, Blue & Buff Charity, or, The Patriarch of the Greek Clergy applying for Relief, 1793.
Gillray associates the interior of the Crown & Anchor with Hell again in this slightly later print. Smoke and flames billow from the door of the tavern whilst the Devil's hands emerge from the depths to pour a series of revolutionary slogans into Fox's bonnet rouge.

It is clear from both these prints that conservatives wished to portray the Crown and Anchor as a place which was quite literally seething with unnatural revolutionary ideas and potential danger. Despite this more than 1,500 ‘gentlemen’ turned out to celebrate the Bastille Day dinner. The meeting itself presented Gillray with an opportunity too good to ignore, and in the days following he sketched a second savagely anti-Whig print featuring the tavern, The Hopes of the Party.

Gillray, The Hopes of the Party, 1791

Though the three 1791 prints associated the Crown and Anchor with a threat to the political order, the meaning of the Crown and Anchor as a symbol in popular prints was not fixed throughout the decade. This was largely a result of a loyalist campaign to appropriate the tavern in the early 1790s in response to the threat of London’s flourishing radical groups and associations who increasingly found a home at the venue. Only five years before his intervention in Colonel Despard’s plight in Coldbath Fields prison, then London barrister John Reeves took a decidedly unfavourable view of the tavern’s growing radical association when he formed his own loyalist counter-society. He tried to appropriate not only the Crown and Anchor site for his meetings but also its name for his association. Originating under the cumbersome title the ‘Association for Preserving Liberty and Property against Republicans and Levellers’, it soon became known in the public sphere as the ‘Crown and Anchor Society’.

In 1793 Gillray produced the print The Chancellor of the Inquisition Marking the Incorrigibles in which the Crown and Anchor is presented as a hotbed of loyalist extremism. In the print Edmund Burke, who was amongst the fiercest critiques of the French Revolution, stands at the door of the tavern which is now stylised as the home of the ‘British Inquisition’.

Gillray, The Chancellor of the Inquisition..., 1793.

Gillray, The Crown & Anchor Libel burnt by the Public Hangman, 1795.
Another satire on Reeve's and the Crown & Anchor's loyalist clientele.

However it was the Crown and Anchor’s reputation as a venue for radical politics which was to prove more enduring. Richard Newton’s 1798 satirical print Sola ‘Virtus Invicta’ (the motto of the Duke of Norfolk) was a response to the highly publicised 1798 birthday celebrations for Charles James Fox, and the prominent, and soon infamous, role of the Duke of Norfolk in the events. The festivities were an annual event, and 1798 saw one of the largest assemblies ever held at the tavern. The Duke’s penchant for drinking and revelry was renowned in London society, as were his liberal political views, despite his close friendship with the Prince Regent. At the request of the chair of the occasion, the Duke of Bedford, the Duke of Norfolk proposed a string of toasts to the 2000-strong audience. Though convention stipulated the first toast at such a public occasion be offered as a salutation to the Monarch, the Duke raised his glass and gave instead to ‘the rights of the people’. The flagrant disregard of custom and etiquette met a mix of cheers and murmured disgruntlement. When the room quieted, the Duke continued with an altogether scandalous line-up of toasts bordering on the treasonous: ‘to constitutional redress for the wrongs of the people’; to ‘a speedy and effectual reform in the representation of the people in parliament’; to ‘the genuine principles of the British Constitution’; and to ‘the people of Ireland—may they be speedily restored to blessings of law and liberty’. When he finally offered a toast to the King, it contained a thinly disguised rebuke reminding the Monarch of his duty—to ‘Our Sovereign’s health—the majesty of the people’.

In his print Sola ‘Virtus Invicta’, Newton shows a tumultuous scene outside the Crown and Anchor with the foreground dominated by the image of the Duke of Norfolk arriving in spectacular and triumphant fashion driving a horse chariot, crowned with the cap of liberty. The front wheel of the chariot crushes the neck of Prime Minister Pitt and the King, whose bald head (lower left) has been de-crowned, as the bishops and clergy wait with fearful anticipation of a similar fate.

Newton, Sola Virtus Invicta - Virtue Alone is Invincible, 1798

The establishment’s reaction to Norfolk’s speech was captured in Gillray’s The Loyal Toast - As Norfolk salutes the majesty of the people a list of his various offices and titles is being shredded behind him. The Duke was dismissed from all his official positions, including his position on the Privy Council and the Lord Lieutenancy of the West Riding. Signalling that the Duke’s powerful friendships would not protect him, the notification of dismissal was sent during a dinner with the Prince Regent. Despite eventually satisfying the King with proclamations of loyalty, he was not reinstated to his official post until 1807.

Gillray, A Loyal Toast, 1798

A key feature of the prints examined thus far is the prominence of the elite gentlemen radicals such as Fox and Burdett who occupied leading roles in events held in the tavern. It is not until Samuel de Wilde’s satire of the 1809 Grand Reform Dinner, however, that we begin to see the Crown and Anchor brethren diversify in terms of social standing. De Wilde seized on the reports of debauchery and drunkenness at the dinner. Speakers were reportedly howled down by intoxicated members of the audience and the meeting is said to have illustrated the growing gulf between the Burdett reformers and the Whigs.

De Wilde, The Reformers Dinner, 1809

Smith, Scene in the Crown & Anchor, 1802
One of the earliest known accurate representations of the interior of the tavern. The audience in Smith's caricature suggests that political meetings at the Crown & Anchor took on an increasing plebian audience from the turn of the century onwards.

In the years of intense political unrest which followed the Napoleonic Wars the Crown and Anchor was represented almost exclusively as a venue for plebeian ultra-radicalism. Isaac Robert Cruikshank’s 1819 satire The Political Champion Turned Resurrection Man! characterises the men who attended the dinner William Cobbett held at the tavern on 3^rd December 1819, to celebrate the repatriation of Tom Paine’s remains from the United States, as an anarchic mob of fifth-column Bonapartists.

I.R. Cruikshank, The Political Champion..., 1819.

The tavern also featured in two of the woodcut illustrated pamphlets which were produced by loyalist publishers in 1819 and 1820 response to the hugely successful series of radical pamphlets by William Hone and George Cruikshank.

A Radical meeting at the Crown & Anchor taken from the anonymously published The Real or Constitutional House that Jack Built, 1819.

That a new generation of graphic satirists could represent the Crown and Anchor in symbolic form alone speaks volumes of the cultural understanding of the venue on the political landscape, and the enduring associations of the tavern and radical politics first formulated a generation earlier. Like the bonnet rouge and tricolour cockade, the tavern had assumed its own political identity; it had become a symbol in its own right.

John Bull caught at his Last Luxury !!!, 1797

2011-11-10T13:59:00.000-08:00

I recently purchased a near mint condition version of this print which was produced by an anonymous caricaturist and published by William Holland in December 1797.

John Bull sits in a rough garden latrine, looking with a resentful scowl at Pitt, who strides towards him from the right, holding a large paper on which he is writing. John says: "What the Devil are you come to peep at now! Am not I to have a moment's peace for you - It is the damn'd Assess'd Taxes have done it - I never had such a pain in my bowels in all my born days!!!" Pitt, who is elegantly dressed, the powder from his bag-wig decorating his shoulders, says: "An abominable shameful Luxury, this is sinning in the open face of Day!" Henry Dundas stands behind Pitt, his hands raised; he looks up sanctimoniously, saying, "Oh Shameful! Scandalous." A picture of a figure with Pitt’s silhouette being hung from a gibbet is pinned to the inside of the toilet door.

The Assessed Taxes were taxes placed on the consumption or use of items which were deemed to be luxury goods. Eleven days before this print had been published Pitt had introduced a motion in the Commons calling for the definition of luxury goods to be widened and for the amount of tax to be increased significantly in order to generate the revenue required to continue the war against France.

The Assessed Taxes were widely evaded and financial pressures eventually forced the Pitt Ministry to scrap the taxes and replace them with a full-blown system of income tax in 1799.

William Elmes, The Yankey Torpedo, 1813

2011-11-09T12:20:00.000-08:00

Following on from Sunday’s final post on Charles Williams, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at one of the few British caricatures which deal with the subject of the 1812 War.

This print was produced by the caricaturist William Elmes and published by Thomas Tegg in November 1813. It reflects British indignation towards the various unsuccessful attempts which were made by the Americans during the war to use “torpedoes” (in the early 1800s the term was used loosely to describe any form of naval mine) in order to sink Royal Navy vessels. In one such incident, which occurred in June of 1813, a British boarding party was blown to pieces when they boarded a booby-trapped schooner which had been disguised as a US merchant vessel and sailed out of New York harbour towards to blockading British squadron.

Understandably, the British public took a rather dim view of the Americans innovative attempts at naval warfare. The British press loudly condemned the practice as “ungentlemenly” (which was an accusation that the British press tended to level at just about every aspect of American society in this period) and provided vocal support for Royal Navy commanders who threatened to bombard US ports in retaliation for torpedo attacks.

On the left of the print the torpedo is presented as a huge sea monster which spews a jet of flames, as well as assorted items of weaponry, barrels of gunpowder and a few snakes for good measure, towards the British vessel on the right. A skeletal figure, presumably representing death, leaps out of the creature's mouth and says “I’ll tip you a yankey torpedo”. A demon that also stands on the monster's head waving the Stars and Stripes, says “Grapple him Citizen and I'll play one of my infernal capers under his bottom”. On the deck of the ship stands the defiant figure of a British sailor. He wears a blue ribbon around his hat with the word “dreadnought” written on it and carries a sabre labelled “British steel”. He bears he backside towards the approaching Americans and says “Blow up my hull indeed - you may Kiss my xxxx - Mr Yankey doodle - Shiver me - I'll tip you a taste of the Shannon and send you down to old Davy.” Giving the Americans “a taste of the Shannon” is a reference to the defeat and capture of the USS Chesapeake by HMS Shannon in the summer of 1813.

William Charles (1776 - 1820) Part II

2011-11-06T10:47:00.000-08:00

The production and dissemination of political caricature reached new heights in America during the War of 1812. The surge of patriotic sentiment which swept over the nation in the wake of the declaration of war against Great Britain provided aspiring American caricaturists with a new audience and created an unprecedented demand for their work. William Charles was to be the war’s most prolific political caricaturist and the seventeen prints he produced between 1812 and 1815 have come to define the American experience of the conflict.

Charles appears to have been quick to capitalise on the commercial opportunities which the war presented. He quickly put aside his career as an illustrator and had engraved and published his first political caricature within a few days of war being declared. This print, Josiah the First, is an attack on Josiah Quincy’s leadership of New England’s opposition to the War Act of June 19^th 1812 and presents Quincy as a Quisling-type figure who is dressed in the manner of George III.

Josiah the First c. 1812

Charles prints are frequently undated but it seems likely that the next satire he produced was A Scene on the Frontiers As Practiced by the Humane British and Their Worthy Allies. This print was probably produced during the late summer or early autumn of 1812 as it refers to the American defeat at Fort Dearborn on 15^th August 1812 and rumours which circulated in the press following the battle that the British had offered to pay their Indian allies a bounty for each American scalp they collected. There is absolutely no evidence to suggest these rumours were true but the belief that Britain endorsed and encouraged Indian atrocities had been securely established in American imaginations since the 1760s and this probably accounts for the print’s apparent success.

A Scene on the Frontier..., c.1812

The early naval victories of the war also created commercial opportunities for Charles. Queen Charlotte and Johnny Bull Got Their Dose of Perry celebrates the American victory in the Battle of Lake Erie in September 1813. Ironically many of Charles most aggressively patriotic prints were heavily reliant upon or even direct copies of, earlier British works. The figure of John Bull in the print below appears to have been lifted from Gillray’s 1796 print National Conveniences. The exploding bottle at the centre of the print also bears a close similarity to the one at the in Gillray’s 1805 caricature Uncorking Old Sherry.

Queen Charlotte and Johnny Bull... c.1813

James Gillray, National Conveniences, 1796 (see figure on the top left).

Charles also borrowed heavily from the works of Thomas Rowlandson. One of the most famous caricatures he produced during the war; John Bull Making a New Batch of Ships to Send to the Lakes, was in fact a simplified version of Rowlandson’s High Fun for John Bull; or, The Republicans Put to Their Last Shift of 1798. In 1813 Charles also re-engraved a copy of Rowlandson’s Soldiers on the March, introduced some minor tweaks to the uniforms of Rowlandson’s redcoats and issued the print under the title of Soldiers on the March to Buffalo.

Thomas Rowlandson, High Fun for John Bull..., 1798

William Charles, John Bull Making a New Batch of Ships... 1813

Thomas Rowlandson, Soldiers on a March, 1808

William Charles, Soldiers on the March to Buffalo, c.1813

Nonetheless Charles was capable of moments of genuine creative flair and technical skill. The print A Wasp Taking a Frolic, which refers to a US naval victory in 1813, was perhaps one of the most striking images Charles ever produced and was imitated by a number of amateur American caricaturists.

A Wasp Taking a Frolic, c.1813

The complex landscape scene in the background of John Bull and the Baltimoreans, which was one of a pair of satires produced in 1814 on the subject of the British campaign in the Chesapeake Bay, also demonstrates that Charles was becoming more adept at composing and executing his engravings.

John Bull and the Baltimoreans, c.1814

The War of 1812 had a fairly disastrous effect on the American economy and a decline in the number of caricatures Charles issued in 1814 and 1815 suggests that the market for such novelties was drying up. An attempt at launching a subscription scheme, in which customers would pay $1.50 per month to receive a folio of four engraved caricatures, foundered due to lack of interest and by 1814 Charles had begun supplementing his income by engraving bank notes. He produced only a couple of satires during the final months of the war. One to celebrate the Battle of New Orleans and two which dealt with the subject of New England’s opposition to the war and the Hartford Convention.

John Bull Before New Orleans, 1815.

Charles continued to dabble in caricature for a couple of years after the end of the War of 1812 but was mainly preoccupied with work as a commercial engraver, illustrator and colourist. He must have achieved a degree of financial success in this field because the 1817 Philadelphia Directory lists him as operating from his own premises at 32 South Third Street.

Louis XVIII Climbing the Mat de Cocagne, c.1816

The last political caricature he is known to have produced was Democracy – against the – Unnatural Union which was engraved in the closing weeks of 1817. It’s a piece of Republican electoral propaganda which was designed to support William Findley’s campaign to become governor of Pennsylvania. It shows Findley being blown towards the seat of government by the shouts of popular approval, whilst his opponent slowly rises on a rickety artificial platform supported by newspaper magnates, disaffected Republicans and unpatriotic Federalists.

Democracy - against the - Unnatural Union, 1817

William Charles downed in the Delaware River off Philadelphia on 9^th August 1820, after falling from the schooner Delaware, a Boston packet, at the beginning of a journey to Boston to promote the sale of a range of children’s books which had produced earlier in the year. He was buried at the Baptist Burial Ground, New Market Street, Philadelphia. At the time of his death his estate was valued at $2,400 and his wife, Mary Charles, continued to operate in Philadelphia as a publisher of children’s books until her death in 1823.

William Charles (1776 - 1820) Part I

2011-11-03T06:06:00.000-07:00

Thoughts on Invasion..., London 1803

In many ways William Charles could be described as an unremarkable figure in the history of early nineteenth century British caricature. His creativity was patchy at best and he unarguably lacked technical skill as a draughtsman and engraver. Nonetheless Charles place in the history of the genre is assured as he was almost singularly responsible for transplanting the techniques and traditions of British caricature to the United States and reinterpreting the medium for an American audience.

Virtually nothing is known about Charles early life other than that he was born in Edinburgh in 1776 and that he enjoyed a brief career working in London as a caricaturist and engraver between mid-1803 and early-1804. During this period he produced about a dozen caricatures which were all apparently self-published from his rooms at 49 Theobald Road in Holborn.

These early caricatures, which were largely preoccupied with the subject of the resumption of the war with Napoleonic France, were characterised by an extremely crude drawing style and borrowed heavily from the works of more successful satirists such as William Holland and James Gillray.

Gulliver and his Guide..., London 1803

A Salute for Boney..., London 1803

The Bone-a-part in a Fresh Place, London 1804

At some time between February and July 1804 Charles sojourn in the Capital came to an end and he relocated back to his native Edinburgh. The last print to carry his London address appears in February 1804 and then in July of that year he issued a social satire entitled John Bull’s Reply to the Watchmen which gave his address as “Charles’ Emporium of Art and Fancies Edinburgh”. Charles may have remained in Edinburgh for the next two or three years, during which time he is only known to have produced four satirical prints all of which dealt with fairly typical themes such as the theatre, dandies and comic swipes at the clergy. From what we know of Charles later career it is quite likely that economic necessity forced him to concentrate his efforts on more staid and lucrative forms of employment such as book illustration or the production of handbills and engraved business cards.

A Fallen Pillar of the Kirk, Edinburgh 1805

It is possible that Charles and his brother Henry emigrated to New York at some point during 1806 but he cannot positively be located there until 1807, when he is listed as operating from an establishment in that city called “Charles’ Repository of Arts” (presumably in direct imitation of Rudolph Ackermann’s famous London publishing house). Whilst in New York he seems to have mainly preoccupied himself as an illustrator, commercial engraver and colourist. His output of caricatures during these years was small and confined to the production of plagiarised copies of imported English prints.

An example of one of Charles bootleg versions of a print by James Gillray can be seen below. The fact that the figures in Charles versions are exactly the same but printed in reverse, suggests that he may have resorted to tracing the designs of other satirists onto copperplate and engraving over them.

William Charles, La Walse, Philadelphia c.1810

James Gillray, La Walse / Le Bon Genre, London 1810

By 1808 he had begun to produce a small number of original caricatures which dealt with American politics. The Cat Let Out of the Bag and The Tory Editor and His Apes Giving Their Pitiful Advice to the American Sailors are two of the earliest political prints he produced and both are strongly anti-Federalist and anti-British in their stance.

The Cat Let Out of the Bag, New York 1808

It is possible that Charles quit New York and relocated to Philadelphia at some point in the latter half of 1808. The account book of the Philadelphia publisher Matthew Carey shows that a William Charles was employed in September 1808 to produce copies of existing engravings and children’s illustrations. Charles name appears intermittently in Carey’s accounts in 1809, 1810 and 1811 and it appears from these entries that he managed to make a reasonable living as a jobbing illustrator and engraver.

However it was to be the outbreak of a war between Charles old homeland and his adopted nation in the summer of 1812 which was to be the making of his career as a caricaturist and political satirist.

To be continued....

Going in Search of the Picturesque

2011-10-28T13:52:00.000-07:00

It's still better than flying Ryan Air

The Print Shop Window will be putting up its shutters for the next couple of days while I take a short holiday.

I plan to return next week with some posts on the Anglo-American caricaturist Charles Williams and some examples of Gillray’s work taken from an album of prints I picked up at an auction recently

I hope some of you have found this stuff interesting. I've certainly had a good time researching and writing it.

See you soon.

Thomas Rowlandson, Sir Cecil's Budget..., 1784

2011-10-26T11:35:00.000-07:00

Thomas Rowlandson, Sir Cecil’s Budget for Paying the National Debt, Published 30^th March 1784 by W. Humphrey

This is one of a number of anti-Tory prints which Rowlandson was paid to produce for the Westminster election of 1784.

During the election campaign the Tory candidate Sir Cecil Wray had suggested that Royal Military Hospital at Chelsea should be closed and that a tax should be placed on maidservants in order to support the repayment of the national debt. Both policies proved to be wildly unpopular with the public and were mercilessly lampooned by the satirists.

The print shows a frenetic scene unfolding as terrified Chelsea pensioners run to escape from a neglected hospital which is collapsing around them. Some lie prostrate, crushed by the pillars, whilst others are escaping as best they can by the help of their sticks and crutches. In the distance Wray is being set upon by a mob of unemployed maidservants who strike at him with brooms and empty a chamber pot over his head. One of the maids is saying “Tax servants maids you brute, and starve poor old soldiers, a fine Member of Parliament”.

Rowlandson’s contribution to the Whigs election campaign was obviously successful as Sir Cecil went on to lose the election and immediately announce his retirement from politics.

I should also note that this blog is not political and therefore any similarities between the views expressed by Sir Cecil Wray and current Tory Party policy is purely coincidental.

William O'Keefe (active c.1794 - c.1797)

2011-10-23T13:15:00.000-07:00

Farmer George's Wonderful Monkey, 1795

During his brief career as a caricaturist William O’Keefe produced around two dozen political prints and a handful of social satires all drawn in a style which was both strikingly primitive and wonderfully demotic. Sadly though we know next to nothing about O’Keefe’s life and he appears to have passed through the world of the mid-1790s London print trade without leaving anything other than his work to posterity.

Even O’Keefe’s nationality is not clear. Many modern works that reference O’Keefe’s work describe him as Irish but these seems to be based on nothing more concrete than Dorothy George’s suggestion that he was “probably of Irish origins” and it remains unclear whether O’Keefe was actually an Irish immigrant or merely of Irish descent.

Certainly Irish affairs figured in O’Keefe’s work. In October 1796 he produced the print Preparing for a French Invasion which is ostensibly a loyalist print but one which O’Keefe manages to subvert wonderfully by portraying the soldiers which George III and Pitt command in the defence of Ireland as a bunch of deranged old women who are crying and even vomiting in terror at the prospect of the French invasion fleet.

Prepared for a French Invasion, 1796

It was initially thought that O’Keefe’s career may have lasted from 1791 to 1805 but subsequent research suggests this may be an over-estimate and that in fact he may only have been active from 1794 until circa 1797. The first print Dorothy George attributed to O’Keefe was an undated edition of Ducking a Pickpocket which had a pencil annotation of 1791, but this date cannot be correct because the print also carries the publication line of Piercy Roberts and Roberts did not acquire his publishing business until 1801.

Ducking a Pickpocket, 179?

Similarly, the British Museum also has examples of O’Keefe prints which were issued by Roberts in the early 1800s but as Roberts had purchased the bankrupt stock of O’Keefe’s former publisher James Aitken, it may simply be the case that Roberts was reusing copperplates that were several years old. There is certainly no evidence to suggest that O'Keefe was directly employed by Roberts himself.

The reasons for O’Keefe’s decision to quit caricature remain a mystery. The young men who made up the majority of London’s print trade often led hand-to-mouth existences which were characterised by extreme poverty, debt, illness and alcoholism. It may be that O’Keefe’s talent was snuffed out in a similar fashion to that of contemporaries such as Richard Newton or Isaac Cruikshank. Or it may be the case that a satirist with such obviously radical and anti-establishment leanings found it harder and harder to ply his trade as the 1790s wore on and government legislation placed ever greater restrictions on the publishers and print shops of London.

Dog Days or Paying Off Billy Budget, 1796

Drunken March from Chalk Farm to the Mews, 1797 - A wonderful satire which lampoons the loyalist militia companies which began to form in London during the 1790s.

A Locust, 1795

Provincial General Buttons Marching to Saratoga with Plunder, 1786

2011-10-20T12:45:00.000-07:00

This is one of the few satirical prints published around the time of the American Revolution which tells us anything about British opinions of the Continental Army. The print itself was actually published in London three years after the conclusion of the war with the Thirteen Colonies by the Edinburgh caricaturist and engraver John Kay (1742 – 1826).

The picture shows an American officer riding along a rough road through a wooded and hilly landscape. He casts a scowling and unpleasant look over his shoulder towards the viewer. A sword and a tomahawk are lodged in his belt, whilst in his hands he carries a musket which appears to have a pitchfork strapped to it like a bayonet. The ‘plunder’ referred to in the title of the print is presumably contained in his bulging saddlebags. A second, rather heavy-set, American is seen riding away into the distance dressed in hat which resembles both a cap of liberty and that of a dunce.

The viewer is not left in much doubt as to the opinion the artist holds of American soldiers. Whilst General Button’s facial expression and copious armaments suggest a thug-like nature, the audience is also invited to laugh at the prospect of a pitchfork wielding yokel being raised to the rank of general.

Although Kay engraved and published the print he was not the original artist. In his memoirs he recalled that;

The print was adapted from a sketch made by Lieutenant-Colonel Campbell whilst he was confined in prison in America, after the treaty of Saratoga. Through a small hole – the only aperture for light in his dungeon – the Colonel had frequent opportunities of seeing General Buttons; and, notwithstanding the gloomy nature of his situation, he could not resist the impulse of taking a sketch of such a remarkable military figure. This sketch he sent home for the amusement of his friends, by home it was communicated to the artist, for the purpose of extended circulation... The circumstances under which it was pencilled – the state of political feeling in the country at that period – and the penchant which even yet exists for enjoying a little wit at the expense of brother Jonathan, were sufficient to stamp a value on the production.

Lieutenant-Colonel Archibald Campbell of the 71st Highland Regiment was captured by the Americans in 1776 when, unaware of the fact that the British army had already evacuated the city, he tried to sail two troop transports into Boston harbour. Campbell was initially treated well by the American authorities but was thrown into Concord gaol in February 1777 after rumours reached the colonies about the harsh treatment Ethan Allan and General Lee received from the British. Campbell described the quarters in which he completed his sketch as being;

... a dungeon of twelve of thirteen feet square, whose sides are black with the grease and litter of successive criminals. Two doors, with double locks and bolts, shut me up from the yard, with an express prohibition to enter it, either for my health or necessary calls of nature. Two small windows, strongly grated with iron, introduce a gloomy light into the apartment and these are, at this hour, without a single pain of glass, although the season for frost and snow is actually in the extreme.

Eventually, following a personal intervention from George Washington, Campbell was moved from his cell to more comfortable lodgings and eventually allowed to move around town of Concord as he pleased. In 1778 he was released as part of an exchange of prisoners and went on to command the British force which captured Savannah from the Americans later that year.

(Note: This post was revised on the basis of some further research which led to the discovery of Kay's memoirs and a couple of excellent Victorian biographies of the Edinburgh caricaturist).

James Gillray, A Democrat - Or - Reason & Philosophy, 1793

2011-10-18T12:15:00.000-07:00

This is perhaps one of my favourite images by Gillray. It presents us with a comic grotesque vision of the Whig MP Charles James Fox (1749 – 1806) as a swaggering, blood-soaked, revolutionary and like all Gillray’s best work veers effortlessly between comedy and horror.

Fox carries a bloody knife in his belt and holds one equally gory hand up to greet the viewer. His other hand is tucked by his side as he performs a celebratory jig or hornpipe. The expression on his face is one of leering stupidity and possible intoxication, something which may also be inferred from the fact that his cheap artisans wig, along with its revolutionary tricolour rosette, sits askance on his head. Gillray also takes the term ‘sans-culotte’ literally and depicts Fox bare-arsed and pointlessly blasting out a fart to accompany his shout of “Ca Ira” (“It’ll be fine” the unofficial anthem of revolutionary France).

This is known to be the one print by Gillray at which Fox took a genuine offence. That in itself is quite an achievement when one considers the various deeds, ranging from suicide to bondage, which the satirist chose to depict the Whig leader indulging in.

The image used here is of my own copy of this print. I actually saw a copy of this print for sale at one of the London BADA fairs a couple of years ago which was purchased by a well-fed representative of White’s Club; a gentlemen’s club in London of which Fox used to be a member. Presumably it’s now hanging up in their bingo hall somewhere...

George Spratt (c.1784 – c.1840)

2011-10-17T06:32:00.000-07:00

The Entomologist, 1830

George Spratt combined a career as a successful London obstetrician with a family business that produced lavishly illustrated medical and natural history works. During the early 1830s he also enjoyed a degree of success as an amateur designer of recreational prints and caricature. Today, if he is remembered at all, it is largely thanks to the ‘personifications’ series which he produced in conjunction with the lithographic engraver G.E. Medley. Issued between 1830 and 1831, each of these prints features a figure that is constructed from the tools or objects associated with their particular profession or trade.

The Itinerant Apothecary, 1830.

The Catch Singers, 1776

2011-10-16T08:22:00.000-07:00

The development of the art of caricature in eighteenth century England owed much to the increasing intensity of British political life during the war with the American Colonies. Between 1775 and 1783 there was a notable expansion in the circulation of printed newspapers and pamphlets which was also matched by a growth in the availability and sophistication of visual satire.

The print pictured above is one of the lesser known examples of political satire which was produced in Britain during the early phase of the American war when public opinion towards the colonists was still largely favourable. It was published anonymously, probably during the first half of 1776, and depicts an imaginary gathering of The Catch Club, a real life gentlemen’s club whose aristocratic members met to indulge a passion for glee-style harmony singing.

The figures gathered around the table are, from right to left; the Prime Minister Lord North, Lord George Germain the Secretary of State for the American Department, Lord Sandwich the First Lord of the Admiralty and real-life founder of the Catch Club and Sir William Howe the commander of the British Army in North America. Each carries a money bag with a label which relates to his specific office and the value £100,000. As they carouse they sing;

Lord North: “They’ll do no more than we. Ha, ha, ha”.

Lord Germain : “With their hearts so strong and bold”.

Lord Sandwich: “When merrily we shall see”.

Sir William Howe: “Ha, ha, he. We have filled our bags with gold”.

Criticism of corruption and political cronyism became endemic in British satire during this period and not without good cause. Sir William Howe made a small fortune by exercising his right to sell military commissions and appoint licensed victuallers to the British forces in North America. By the time Howe resigned as commander in chief in October 1777 both he and his brother were being publically accused of deliberately prolonging the war for personal gain.

An Emblematical view of the Constitutions of England & France c.1793

2011-10-15T04:33:00.000-07:00

I acquired this unusual little print sometime ago from an antiques dealer in London. It carries no publication information but is almost certainly one of the many satirical pieces which were produced by the loyalist presses in Britain in the immediate aftermath of the outbreak of war with Revolutionary France in 1793. What I particularly like about it is the fact that it combines political satire with the eighteenth century fashion for silhouette portraiture.

The print invites the viewer to make a comparison between the supposed virtues of Britain’s system of constitutional monarchy with the new system of government which was unfolding in France.

On the left the British constitution is portrayed as a rock labelled ‘unanimity’. The royal crest is engraved into the rock face and the whole edifice is topped by the British crown which is emitting a divine halo. The sides of the British rock form the images of King George III and Queen Charlotte.

To the right the constitution of revolutionary France is depicted as a rampaging hydra. Its heads tear the royal crown and fleur-de-lis to pieces, whilst it tail coils around a guillotine to smash the scales of justice and the old flag of Bourbon France, which carries the label ‘anarchy’. Within the body of the Jacobin serpent it is possible to pick out the images of Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, Princess Marie Thérèse and the young Dauphin.

A nice reminder of the "horrors" of representative democracy!

A Political Duster

2011-10-12T13:53:00.000-07:00

I came across an unusual version of a social satire by C.J. Grant whilst doing some research for yesterday’s post.

It’s an alternative version of The Century of Invention Anno Domini 2000 which has been reworked, enlarged, reversed and printed in red ink onto a linen handkerchief. Unfortunately it carries no publication date and therefore it’s not possible to determine whether it was printed before or after Grant produced a lithograph version of this image as part of the frontispiece to Every Body’s Album & Caricature Magazine No. 3 in 1834. The handkerchief version is also unsigned and so we can’t be even sure whether the linen version was engraved by Grant or an imitator plagiarising his work.

Printing onto textiles became a fairly common practice during the 1830s and was one of the many ways in which canny publishers sought to evade the punitive stamp duty on newspapers, pamphlets and other printed materials. The radical publisher Henry Berthold is credited with starting the craze in 1831 when he began publishing a weekly newssheet printed on calico entitled Political Handkerchief which was soon followed by copycats such as the Duster for the Whigs and Political Touchwood.

For obvious reasons linen prints are something of a rarity today and it’s nice to see an example of Grant’s work in this medium. Nonetheless I think the New York antiques dealer who is trying to sell this handkerchief is being somewhat ambitious in asking a cool $14,500 for it!

Caricature and the March of Intellect

2011-10-11T12:31:00.000-07:00

The 1820s were a time of rapid technological and social change in Great Britain. The Industrial Revolution, which began to grip the nation in earnest during this decade, produced a plethora of new inventions and gave an unprecedented boost to the living standards and material wealth of ordinary Britons. However many observers also lamented the way in which industry was sweeping away the familiar urban and rural landscapes of Great Britain and were fearful of that an industrial revolution would inevitably lead to political revolution.

Contemporaries referred to the seemingly irresistible advance of industrialisation and democratisation during the late Hanoverian era as “The March of Intellect” and this theme came to dominate social satire caricatures for about five years from 1827 until 1831.

Initially some of the early “March” prints betrayed a degree of optimism about the dawning of new era of industry and technology. William Heath produced two prints entitled The March of Intellect in 1828 and 1829 which conjure up images of a near future in which hard manual labour has been abolished and Britons revel amidst a plentiful supply of exotic imported foodstuffs and cheap manufactured goods. Both of these images appear oddly prophetic to modern audiences and anticipate the invention of such things as commercial flight, motorcars, aerial warfare, electric street lighting and the channel tunnel.

C.J. Grant also presented a benign vision of industrial progress in the frontispiece to Every Body’s Album and Caricature Magazine No. 3 published in 1830. His take on Britain in the year 2000 is one in which gentlemen in oddly Victorian costume are propelled around the skies on mechanical wings and whole building are mounted on rails and moved around the country. Whilst Grant’s predictions have, sadly, mostly been proven inaccurate, he does at least have the dubious honour of anticipating the creation of the high rise flat – which in the image below is shaped like a large Doric column and accessible only via balloon transport.

Other satirists however chose to present “The March of Intellect” as a destructive and potentially threatening force which was to be feared, resisted or mocked. Cruikshank is credited with producing what is perhaps one of the most well-known “March” prints of them all in 1829’s London Going Out of Town, which reflects on the breakneck expansion of London’s industrial suburbs and the swallowing up of old rural hamlets like Hampstead.

Cruikshank’s Horses ‘Going to the Dogs’ similarly laments the passing of the pre-industrial age and hints at the more brutal aspects of the coming age of industry.

Another aspect of “The March” which the satirists, or at least their predominantly middle class patrons, also found particularly unsettling was the development of an organised movement which aimed at promoting self-education amongst the working classes. Consequently many of the satirical prints relating to this aspect of "The March" adopt a rather dismissive and sneering tone, as shown in the examples by Cruikshank and Heath below.

Explicit references to “The March” become less frequent after 1830 but satirists continued to draw on the themes of the 1820s during the debates over Parliamentary and electoral reform in the following two decades. Those at the radical end of the political spectrum, such as C.J. Grant, returned to the notion of a respectable, educated and upwardly mobile working class when extolling the virtues of political reform, whilst conservative and establishment satirists continued to mock the concept of puffed up and over-educated labourers demanding all manner of political rights.

A Slap at Slop and the Bridge Street Gang - 1821

2011-10-10T12:42:00.000-07:00

A Slap at Slop and the Bridge Street Gang is arguably the most visually impressive of all the satirical prints produced by the collaboration between the radical publisher William Hone and the artist George Cruikshank but it also remains one of the least well-known.

Studies of Hone’s work, such as Ben Wilson’s The Laughter of Triumph and Edgell Rickword’s Radical Squibs and Loyalist Ripostes, have naturally tended to focus on the pamphlets the duo produced at the height of their creative peak in 1819-1820, such as The Political House that Jack Built, The Queens Matrimonial Ladder and Non Mi Ricordo, and have consequently treated A Slap at Slop... almost as a footnote in Hone’s career as a political satirist.

To some extent this neglect is understandable. A Slap at Slop... was the final pamphlet produced by Hone and Cruikshank and by the time it was published in August 1821 their professional and personal relationship had reached near breaking point. The dissipated lifestyle led by the young Cruikshank and his willingness to take commissions to produce anti-radical satires for loyalist publishers and journals irked Hone, who was already starting to show signs of the mental exhaustion which would result in a complete nervous breakdown just a few weeks after the Slap’s publication.

The subject matter of the pamphlet is also less immediately engaging as it essentially reflects on infighting between the loyalist and radical press and on a personal attack against Hone’s bête noir the loyalist editor of the New Times newspaper, Dr John Stoddard.

Nonetheless I think the Slap contains some of the most striking images Cruikshank produced in the medium of woodblock engraving. The images here are taken from the original broadsheet version of A Slap at Slop which was produced in 1821. A quarto-sized version was also produced by Hone the following year when he reissued his political pamphlets in a single volume.