GILLRAY, James - b. 1756 London, d. 1815 London - WGA

GILLRAY, James

(b. 1756 London, d. 1815 London)

English draughtsman and engraver, one of the most eminent of English caricaturists. During his career he engraved over 1500 prints and invented, almost single-handed, the genre of British political caricature. In his lifetime he was feared and admired; his reputation waned in the strait-laced moral climate that succeeded the Regency.

He began his career as an engraver of letter-heads and although he later studied at the Royal Academy Schools, he seems to have been largely self-trained. After the publication of his print A New Way to Pay the National Debt (1786), a satire on the royal family, he found his bent in caricature and achieved enormous popularity. He enlarged the scope of Hogarth’s satire, making his caricature more personal than Hogarth’s general social comment, and he showed great fecundity and vividness of imagination. In 1831 the Athenaeum described him as a ‘caterpillar on the green leaf of Reputation’. His career was cut short by insanity in 1811.

Dublures of Characters

The Swiss Jean Gaspard Lavater published the Essays on Physiognomy which was translated and illustrated by Fuseli. This publication attempted to bring some order to the contemporary theory that external facial or cranial formation revealed the character. It was a direct parody of Lavater that the greatest London caricaturist, James Gillray designed his plate Dublures of Characters in 1798, alluding to the allegedly sinister revolutionary motives of the radical politician Charles James Fox and his friends in the Whig party by depicting them with their grotesque doubles, the ‘Arch Fiend’, Judas, or the drunken Silenus.

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Long Live the Constitution, One and In(di)visible

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Sin, Death and the Devil

This satirical print is one of the sources from which Jacques-Louis David borrowed when painted the Intervention of the Sabine Women.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 13 minutes):

Luigi Boccherini: Symphony in D minor (The House of the Devil)

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The Blood of the Murdered Crying for Vengeance

When the news of the execution of Louis XVI in Paris arrived in London, even the liberal supporters of the Revolution changed their opinion and felt that anarchy and violence replaced the ideals of freedom and equality.

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The Plum-Pudding in Danger

The political cartoon first appeared in England. The significant feature of this genre was its combination of the caricature of a known individual with some political occurrence, which was often represented emblematically. It was the emergence of an official parliamentary opposition in the age of George III that provided the climate in which such open criticism of government could flourish.

The most memorable and original caricaturist of the period was James Gillray. Trained at the Royal Academy, he was an immensely skilled draftsman who was able to draw on a detailed knowledge of historical painting when making his satires. He fully understood the concept of using caricature to present a visual embodiment not just of the features, but also of the characters of his victims. His main butts were the leading politicians of the day, both British and foreign.

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The Zenith of French Glory

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