Gillray wrought much the same influence upon George Cruikshank. Influence of Gillray on Cruikshank. I have seen it gravely asserted by some of those who have written upon him,[2] that this great artist never executed a drawing which could call a blush into the cheek of modesty. But those who have written upon George Cruikshank—and their name is legion—instead of beginning at the beginning, and thus tracing the gradual and almost insensible formation of his style, appear to me to have plunged as it were into medias res, and commenced at the point when he dropped caricature and became an illustrator of books. Book illustration was scarcely an art until George Cruikshank made it so; and the most interesting period of his artistic career appears to us to be the one in which he pursued the path indicated by James Gillray, until his career of caricaturist merged into his later employment of a designer and etcher of book illustration, by which no doubt he achieved his reputation. In answer to those who tell us that he never produced a drawing which could call a blush into the cheek of modesty, and never raised a laugh at the expense of decency, we will only say that we can produce at least a score of instances to the contrary. To go no further than “The Scourge,” we will refer them to three: his Dinner of the Four-in-Hand Club at Salthill, in vol. i.; his Return to Office (1st July, 1811), in vol. ii.; and his Coronation of the Empress of the Nares (1st September, 1812), in vol. iv.

As the century passed out of its infancy and attained the maturer Revolution effected by H. B. age of thirty years, a gradual and almost imperceptible change came over the spirit of English graphic satire. The coarseness and suggestiveness of the old caricaturists gradually disappeared, until at length, in 1830, an artist arose who was destined to work a complete revolution in the style and manner of English caricature. This artist was John Doyle,—the celebrated H. B. He it was that discovered that pictures might be made mildly diverting without actual coarseness or exaggeration; and when this fact was accepted, the art of caricaturing underwent a complete transition, and assumed a new form. The “Sketches” of H. B. owe their chief attraction to the excellence of their designer as a portrait painter; his successors, with less power in this direction but with better general artistic abilities, rapidly improved upon his idea, and thus was founded the modern school of graphic satirists represented by Richard Doyle, John Leech, and John Tenniel. So completely was the style of comic art changed under the auspices of these clever men, that the very name of “caricature” disappeared, and the modern word “cartoon” assumed its place. With the exception indeed of Carlo Pellegrini (the “Ape” of Vanity Fair), and his successors, we have now no caricaturist in the old and true acceptation of the term, and original and clever as their productions are, their compositions are timid compared with those of Bunbury, Gillray, Rowlandson, and their successors, being limited to a weekly “exaggerated” portrait, instead of composed of many figures.

James Gillray. [May 14th, 1799. “THE GOUT.”
W. H. Bunbury, etched by Gillray.] [1811, pubd. May 15th, 1818. “INTERIOR OF A BARBER’S SHOP IN ASSIZE TIME.” [Face p. 5

But caricature was destined to receive its final blow at the hands of that useful craftsman the wood-engraver. The application of wood-engraving to all kinds of illustration, whether graphic or comic, and the mode in which time, labour, and expense are economised, by the large wood blocks being cut up into squares, and each square entrusted to the hands of a separate workman, has virtually superseded the old and far more effective process of etching. Economy is now the order of the day in matters of graphic satire as in everything else; people are no longer found willing to pay a shilling for a caricature when they may obtain one for a penny. Hence it has come to pass, that whilst comic artists abound, the prevailing spirit of economy has reduced their productions to a dead level, and the work of an artist of inferior power and invention, may successfully compete for public favour with the work of a man of talent and genius like John Tenniel, a result surely to be deplored, seeing there never was a time which offered better opportunities for the pencil of a great and original caricaturist than the present.[3]

It is a common practice, and I may add mistake, with writers Mistake of those who compare modern Caricaturists with Hogarth. on comic artists or caricaturists of our day, to compare them with Hogarth. Both Hogarth and the men of our day are graphic satirists, but there is so broad a distinction between the satire of each, and the circumstances of the times in which they respectively laboured, that comparison is impossible. Those who know anything of this great and original genius, must know that he entertained the greatest horror of being mistaken for a caricaturist pure and simple; and although he executed caricatures for special purposes, they may literally be counted on the fingers. “His pictures,” says Hazlitt, “are not imitations of still life, or mere transcripts of incidental scenes and customs; but powerful moral satires, exposing vice and folly in their most ludicrous points of view, and with a profound insight into the weak sides of character and manners, in all their tendencies, combinations, and contrasts. There is not a single picture of his containing a representation of mere pictorial or domestic scenery.” His object is not so much “to hold the mirror up to nature,” as “to show vice her own feature, scorn her own image.” “Folly is there seen at the height—the moon is at the full—it is the very error of the time. There is a perpetual error of eccentricities, a tilt and tournament of absurdities, pampered with all sorts of affectation, airy, extravagant, and ostentatious! Yet he is as little a caricaturist as he is a painter of still life. Criticism has not done him justice, though public opinion has.”[4] “A set of severer satires,” says Charles Lamb, “(for they are not so much comedies, which they have been likened to, as they are strong and masculine satires), less mingled with anything of mere fun, were never written upon paper or graven upon copper. They resemble Juvenal, or the satiric touches in Timon of Athens.”

W. Hogarth.] [“Mariage à la Mode.”
Paul Sandby.] [Anti-Hogarthian Caricature. “A Mountebank Painter demonstrating to his admirers and subscribers that crookedness is ye most beautifull.” [Face p. 7.

Hogarth was a stern moralist and satirist, but his satires have Character of Hogarth’s Satires. nothing in common with the satires of the nineteenth century; such men as the infamous Charteris and the quack Misaubin figure in his compositions, and their portraits are true to the life. Although his satire is relieved with flashes of humour, the reality and gravity of the satire remain undisturbed. The March to Finchley is one of the severest satires on the times; it shows us the utter depravity of the morals and manners of the day, the want of discipline of the king’s officers and soldiers, which led to the routs of Preston and Falkirk, the headlong flight of Hawley and his licentious and cowardly dragoons. Some modern writers know so little of him that they have not only described his portrait of Wilkes as a caricature, but have cited the inscription on his veritable contemporary caricature of Churchill in proof of the assertion. Now what says this inscription? “The Bruiser (Churchill, once the Reverend), in the character of a Russian Hercules, regaling himself after having killed the monster Caricatura, that so severely galled his virtuous friend, the heaven-born Wilkes.” Hogarth’s use of the word caricatura conveys a meaning which is not patent at first sight; Wilkes’s leer was the leer of a satyr, “his face,” says Macaulay, “was so hideous that the caricaturists were forced in their own despite to flatter him.”[5] The real sting lies in the accuracy of Hogarth’s portrait (a fact which Wilkes himself admitted), and it is in this sarcastic sense that Hogarth makes use of the word “caricatura.”

Turning from Hogarth to a modern artist, in spite of his faults of Gustave Doré. most marvellous genius and inventive faculty, I frequently find critics of approved knowledge and sagacity describing the late Gustave Doré as a caricaturist. It may seem strange at first sight to introduce the name of Doré into a work dealing exclusively with English caricature art, and I do so, not by reason of the fact that his works are as familiar to us in England as in France, not because he has pictorially interpreted some of the finest thoughts in English literature, but because I find his name so constantly mentioned in comparison with English caricaturists and comic artists, and more especially with our George Cruikshank. Now Gustave Doré is, if possible, still less a caricaturist than our English Hogarth. I have seen the ghastly illustrations to the licentious “Contes Drolatiques” of Balzac cited in proof of his claims to be considered a caricaturist. I will not deny that Doré did try his hand once upon a time at caricature, and if we are to judge him by these attempts, we should pronounce him the worst French caricaturist the world ever saw, which would be saying a great deal; for a worse school than that of the modern French caricaturists (and I do not except even Gavarni, Cham, or Daumier), does not anywhere exist. That this man of marvellous genius had humour I do not for one moment deny; but it was the grim humour of an inquisitor or torturer of the middle ages—of one that revels in a perfect nightmare of terror.[6] Genius is said to be nearly allied to madness; and if one studies some of his weird creations—such, for instance, as The Judgment Day in the legend of “The Wandering Jew”—the thought involuntarily suggests itself that a brain teeming with such marvellous and often morbid conceptions, might have been pushed off its balance at any moment. Gustave Doré delights in lofty, mediæval-gabled buildings, with bartizans and antique galleries; in steep streets, dominated by gloomy turrets; in narrow entries, terminating in dark vistas; in gloomy forests, crowded with rocky pinnacles; in masses of struggling, mutilated men and horses; in monstrous forms of creeping, crawling, slimy, ghastly horror. By the side of the conceptions of Gustave Doré—teste for instance the weird pictures of “The Wandering Jew” already mentioned—George Cruikshank sinks at times into insignificance; and yet side by side with George Cruikshank, as a purely comic artist or caricaturist, Doré is beneath mediocrity.

Gustave Doré.] [From “Contes Drolatiques.” “SERGEANT-OF-THE-JUSTICE TAUPIN.”Gustave Doré.] [From “Contes Drolatiques.” “THE ABBOT OF MARMOUSTIERS.” [Back to p. 8.
Gustave Doré.] [From “Contes Drolatiques.” “THE LANDLORD OF THE THREE BARBELS.”Gustave Doré.] [From “Contes Drolatiques.” MONSEIGNEUR HUGON. [Back to p. 9.