Tuesday, July 4, 2023

One of those Stories

Old Bumblehead Trying on the Napoleonic Boots,
that is, French King Louis Philippe preparing for War,
by George Cruikshank, 1823

From a review of two books about satirical illustrators in 18th- and 19th-century Britain:

Cruikshank's son George became a prolific illustrator, widely loved, "kind, genial, honest," a temperance campaigner and veritable national treasure. Only after his death was it revealed that he had a secret second household and eleven children with a former maid, Adelaide Attree, to whom he left everything. His wife, Eliza, had known nothing.

Also this, about the career of the first of the major English satirical cartoonists, James Gillray, whose work was often quite cruel:

Far from disliking the fun that was made of them, famous people hoped to be included and they became collectors too. George Canning, at the beginning of his parliamentary career, was desperate for Gillray to cracature him. Nelson, after the Battle of the Nile, wrote to his wife asking her to send out Gillray's caricature of him.

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