[Original Size] -- [Medium-Size]
CHAPTER VI. HAND-TO-MOUTH WORK.
Shepherd. “What a subject for a picture by Geordie Cruik-shanks—Ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!” *
* Noctes Ambrosiano, Nov. 1828.
Exactly. What a picture for the inimitable George! Humphreys in St. James’s Street, Fores in Piccadilly, Fairburn of Broadway, Ludgate Hill, Hodgson and Co. of Newgate Street, W. Hone of Fleet Street, S. Knight of Sweeting’s Alley, J. Dolby of the Strand, poor old Limbird of the same thoroughfare, and many others, all joined in the chorus. “What a subject for a picture by Geordie Cruikshanks”—let the new subject of the moment be what it might—a scene in the condemned cell, characters for Twelfth Night, a frontispiece to a song, His Most Gracious Majesty George the Fourth returning from Westminster Hall in his Coronation Robes, or the Mermaid now exhibiting at the Turf Coffee House in St. James’s Street, or Liston, or the elder Watkins in a new character, or Grimaldi in motley, pattering his last song! I have glanced at the more important work produced by George Cruikshank between 1820 and 1830; and the reader has seen what kind of effect it made in its time, and how it has been judged by critics of high authority. But the full strength of the artist can be estimated only after an examination of the sum of minor work which he got through at the same time. When his “Life in London” and Paris, “Phrenological Illustrations,” “Humourist,” “Points of Humour,” and many series of book illustrations—comprehending a notable quantity of his best creations—are estimated, in conjunction with his hand-to-mouth work for the caricature shops, and the whole has been surveyed at once, the connoisseur stands literally amazed at the immeasurable fecundity of the artist. Within the range of this decade of feverish activity is amassed such wealth of fancy, of invention, of jocund spirit, of sympathy for suffering, of rage over wrong, of minute observation of men and things, and withal such conscientious, ever-improving execution with pencil and needle, and lithographic ink and tinting-brush, upon wood and stone, and steel and copper, as not all the caricaturists or comic artists who have swarmed in Fleet Street since the Queen’s coronation day could equal, if they made a joint show of their best. Cruikshank was lavish with his fancy, and his humour lives upon the smallest subject. He never made one poor little idea stand alone, as the practice is in the comic or satirical cartoons of the present day. It was his wont to support his dominant conception with a score of helpful accessories. He laid every detail under contribution towards the elucidation of the story to be told. His caricatures, as well as his serious pictures, abound in admirable by-play. His power of concentrating interest is unmatched. His chairs and tables speak. There is life in every accessory. Nature morte did not exist for him. “Dead as a door-nail” he could not understand; for under the magnetism of his etching-needle the nail would laugh and speak. He was so full of life himself—a hornpipe dancer in his eighty-fourth year *—that, in spite of him, he infused it into anything he touched. No artist ever threw such movement and infused such vital breath into his pictures, as this untaught man of genius spontaneously breathed into his etchings and woodcuts. A scrimmage by him inclines the beholder to lift his arm to protect himself. When he leads off a dance upon copper, you involuntarily hum a jig. When his characters are merry, you laugh outright with them.