Napoleon in the Valley of the Shadow of Death.
From James Gillray's caricature.
As Gillray retires from the field several other clever artists stand ready to take his place, and chief among them Rowlandson. The latter had a distinct advantage over Gillray in his superior artistic training. He was educated in the French schools, where he gave especial attention to studies from the nude. In the opinion of such capable judges as Reynolds, West, and Lawrence, his gifts might have won him a high place among English artists, if he had not turned, through sheer perversity, to satire and burlesque. Rowlandson's Napoleonic cartoons began in July, 1808. These initial efforts are neither especially characteristic nor especially clever, but they certainly were duly appreciated by the public. Joseph Grego, in his interesting and comprehensive work upon Rowlandson, says of them:
The Spider's Web.
From a German caricature commemorating German success in 1814.
"It is certain that the caricaturist's travesties of the little Emperor, his burlesques of his great actions and grandiose declarations, his figurative displays of the mean origin of the imperial family, with the cowardice and depravity of its members, won popular applause ... And when disasters began to cloud the career of Napoleon, as army after army melted away, ... the artist bent his skill to interpret the delight of the public. The City competed with the West End in buying every caricature, in loyal contest to prove their national enmity for Bonaparte. In too many cases, the incentive was to gratify the hatred of the Corsican rather than any remarkable merit that could be discovered in the caricatures. Very few of these mock-heroic sallies imprint themselves upon the recollection by sheer force of their own brilliancy, as was the case with Gillray, and frequently with John Tenniel. Rowlandson and Cruikshank are risible, but not inspired."