In Cruikshank's later years he made a good many attempts at oil painting, and exhibited quite a number of paintings at the Royal Academy all with more or less success. But the larger and best known of these is the "Worship of Bacchus;" it is a work of inexhaustible detail and invention, and was received by the public with great favour; the size is 7 feet 8 inches high by 13 feet 3 inches long, and it is now in the National Gallery.
However, to return to the affairs of the family. In time the brother Isaac Robert having got married, the whole family removed to King Street, Holborn. Soon afterwards the mother, George, and sister took a house in Claremont Square, Pentonville, at that period partially in the country. Later on, becoming married. George removed to Amwell Street, where he remained for thirty years. He afterwards resided in several suburban localities, but finally settled down at 263 Hampstead Road, where he died on the 1st of February, 1878, and in the following November his remains were finally deposited in the crypt of St. Paul's Cathedral.
In person Cruikshank was a broad-chested man, rather below the middle height, with a high forehead, blue-grey eyes, a hook nose, and a pair of strong whiskers. In his younger days he had been an adept at boxing and all manly sports, as also an enthusiastic volunteer, ultimately becoming lieutenant-colonel of the 48th Middlesex Volunteers. He preserved his energy almost to the last day of his life. Even at eighty he was ready to dance a hornpipe, or sing a song, "he was," says one who knew him well, "a light hearted, merry, jolly old gentleman, full physically of humorous action and impulsive gesture, but in every word and deed a God-fearing, queen-honouring, truth-loving, honest man."
The old school of caricaturists in which the names of Gilray, Rowlandson, Woodward, and Bunbury are most prominent, was noted chiefly for the broad, and in many cases, vulgar treatment of the subjects which were dealt with. The later school of caricaturists, in their mode of treating similar subjects, differed considerably from their predecessors. The leading member of the new school was George Cruikshank. He lived and worked during two generations, and may be considered as the connecting link between the old school and the new. At first Cruikshank to some extent followed Gilray and Rowlandson, but gradually fell off from their style of art, and in its stead produced work of a more serious and more artistic nature, which was the beginning of a new era in the history of caricature. His illustrations to innumerable works are of the highest order, and have made for him an everlasting reputation.
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