No. 215. A Contrast.
I have already remarked that Sayer was almost exclusively a political caricaturist. The exceptions are a few prints on theatrical subjects, in which contemporary actors and actresses are caricatured, and a single subject from fashionable life. A copy of the latter forms our cut No. 215. It has no title in the original, but in a copy in my possession a contemporary has written on the margin in pencil that the lady is Miss Snow and the gentleman Mr. Bird, no doubt well-known personages in contemporary society. It was published on the 19th of July, 1783.
One of Sayer’s most successful caricatures, in regard to the effect it produced on the public, was that on Fox’s India Bill, published on the 5th of September, 1783. It was entitled “Carlo Khan’s Triumphal Entry into Leadenhall Street,” Carlo Khan being personified by Fox, who is carried in triumph to the door of the India House on the back of an elephant, which presents the face of lord North. Burke, who had been the principal supporter of the bill in debate, appears in the character of the imperial trumpeter, and leads the elephant on its way. On a banner behind Carlo, the old inscription, “The Man of the People,” the title popularly given to Fox, is erased, and the two Greek words, ΒΑΣΙΛΕΥΣ ΒΑΣΙΛΕΩΝ “king of kings,” substituted in its place. From a chimney above, the bird of ill omen croaks forth the doom of the ambitious minister, who, it was pretended, aimed at making himself more powerful than the king himself; and on the side of the house just below we read the words—
The night-crow cried foreboding luckless time.—Shakespeare.
Henry William Bunbury belonged to a more aristocratic class in society than any of the preceding. He was the second son of sir William Bunbury, Bart., of Mildenhall, in the county of Suffolk, and was born in 1750. How he first took so zealously to caricature we have no information, but he began to publish before he was twenty-one years of age. Bunbury’s drawing was bold and often good, but he had little skill in etching, for some of his earlier prints, published in 1771, which he etched himself, are coarsely executed. His designs were afterwards engraved by various persons, and his own style was sometimes modified in this process. His earlier prints were etched and sold by James Bretherton, who has been already mentioned as publishing the works of James Sayer. This Bretherton was in some esteem as an engraver, and he also had a print-shop at 132, New Bond Street, where his engravings were published. James had a son named Charles, who displayed great talent at an early age, but he died young. As early as 1772, when the macaronis (the dandies of the eighteenth century) came into fashion, James Bretherton’s name appears on prints by Bunbury as the engraver and publisher, and it occurs again as the engraver of his print of “Strephon and Chloe” in 1801, which was published by Fores. At this and a later period some of his designs were engraved by Rowlandson, who always transferred his own style to the drawings he copied. A remarkable instance of this is furnished by a print of a party of anglers of both sexes in a punt, entitled “Anglers of 1811” (the year of Bunbury’s death). But for the name, “H. Bunbury, del.,” very distinctly inscribed upon it, we should take this to be a genuine design by Rowlandson; and in 1803 Rowlandson engraved some copies of Bunbury’s prints on horsemanship for Ackermann, of the Strand, in which all traces of Bunbury’s style are lost. Bunbury’s style is rather broadly burlesque.
No. 216. How to Travel on Two Legs in a Frost.
Bunbury had evidently little taste for political caricature, and he seldom meddled with it. Like Collet, he preferred scenes of social life, and humorous incidents of contemporary manners, fashionable or popular. He had a great taste for caricaturing bad or awkward horsemanship or unmanageable horses, and his prints of such subjects were numerous and greatly admired. This taste for equestrian pieces was shown in prints published in 1772, and several droll series of such subjects appeared at different times, between 1781 and 1791, one of which was long famous under the title of “Geoffrey Gambado’s Horsemanship.” An example of these incidents of horsemanship is copied in our cut No. 216, where a not very skilful rider, with a troublesome horse, is taking advantage of the state of the ground for accelerating locomotion. It is entitled, “How to travel on Two Legs in a Frost,” and is accompanied with the motto, in Latin, “Ostendunt terris hunc tantum fata, neque ultra esse sinent.”
No. 217. Strephon and Chloe.