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Satire and Social Commentary... The Life of George Cruikshank
- February 2009
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The Duchess of Do-Good's Screen1
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George Cruikshank (1792 - 1878), one of the
most prolific illustrators and satirists working in England, was praised
as the "modern Hogarth"2 during his lifetime. He was a child of
the eighteenth century and of the city of London. Born in the fashionable
Bloomsbury district he was a member of the Cruikshank family of caricaturists
and artists. His father Isaac was a well-known engraver and caricaturist.
From an early age George worked at his side learning the techniques of etching,
watercolor, and sketching. His older brother Isaac Robert was a less well
known, but equally creative, caricaturist, illustrator, and portrait miniaturist. |
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Click on an image for a larger view
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Ignorace is bliss3 |
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In 1811 while George was still in his teens,
he gained popular success with his series of political caricatures that
he created for the periodical, The Scourge, a Monthly Expositor of Imposture
and Folly. This publication lasted until 1816, during which time Cruikshank
came to rival James Gillray, the leading English caricaturist of the preceding
era. In fact, because their style was so similar as to be indistinguishable,
Cruikshank was employed by Hannah Humphrey, James Gillray's publisher and
landlady, to finish plates Gillray was too ill to complete.
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Tell Tale4
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A Modern Head-dress, with a little Polite Conversation5
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The Prince of Wales was a favorite
of the caricaturists of the period. The future George IV lived a life of
great excess and was considered a libertine of the first water. Cruikshank
delineated Tories, Whigs and Radicals impartially but he was especially
fond of satirizing the Prince. This trenchant fashion reached its apex in
early 1820 when the Prince ascended to the throne on the death of his father,
George III. George IV tried to suppress the satirists and their publishers
through the legal system but was unsuccessful. Then he turned to bribery.
The royal archives at Windsor show that between 1819 and 1822 George IV
spent £2,600 in payments for the silence of the satirists. A receipt
in the Windsor archives records that on June 19, 1820 the king paid George
Cruikshank £100 and his brother Robert £70 "in consideration
of a pledge not to caricature His Majesty in any immoral situation."6
Cruikshank took the money more seriously than the pledge and continued to
satirize the king. In August 1820, George and Robert were summoned to the
Brighton Pavilion to negotiate "with the king" further limits
on their satire. This effectively ended the Cruikshank's unbridled skewering
of George IV.
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The Royal Extinguisher7
Merry Making on the Regents Birthday. 18128 |
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Dangerous to be Safe9
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In the 1820's, as the singular
satirical etchings that Cruikshank was known for declined in popularity,
he successfully shifted to book illustration. He became known for amiably
humoristic illustrations, now deservedly esteemed for their unique perspective
and sense of fun. Cruikshank took to book illustration with great fervor
and illustrated many notable series of books. Among these were The Humorist
(1819-21), Life in Paris (1822), and Life in London (1821)
which he co-illustrated with his brother Robert. For Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm,
the eminent Brothers Grimm, he provided 22 illustrations for their Collection
of German Popular Stories (1824-26). |
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Popular Gardens10
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The Wedding Day11
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Fagin in the Condemned Cell, from Oliver Twist12 |
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Undoubtedly his most famous collaboration was
with Charles Dickens. Cruikshank illustrated Sketches by Boz (1836)
and Oliver Twist (1838) for him. George worked closely with Dickens
on Oliver Twist, helping him to devise many of the plot developments
in the book. Though Cruikshank was never acknowledged as more than illustrator
for Oliver Twist he always felt that he played a great part in the
success of the novel and deserved more credit. On December 30, 1871 Cruikshank
published a letter in The Times in which he claimed credit for writing much
of the storyline of Oliver Twist. The letter launched a fierce controversy
around who created the work and effectively ended what was until then a
profitable working relationship. |
| In the 1830's he began campaigning
against the abuses of alcohol, especially gin. In 1847 he renounced all
alcohol and became an enthusiastic supporter of the Temperance Society in
Great Britain, a sharp contrast to his early years when the wee hours of
the morning often found him locked up in police custody for being drunk
in public. Cruikshank produced a long series of pictures and illustrations,
pictorial pamphlets and tracts for the Society. The best known of these
are The Bottle, 8 plates (1847), and its sequel, The Drunkard's
Children, 8 plates (1848). |
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Alcohol Death and the Devil13 |
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The Worship of Bacchus14
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evils of alcohol culminated in The Worship of Bacchus, published
by subscription and based on the artist's vast oil painting of the same
name, now in the Tate Gallery in London. George conceived the idea for the
painting during an 1859 weekly meeting of the Committee of the National
Temperance League. He planned a "monumental painting depicting all
phases of drunkenness, from beggar to lord and cradle to grave."15 He
began the huge painting in 1860 and completed it in 1862. Along with the
painting of the canvas, Cruikshank also worked with Charles Mottram to etch
the plate for the engraving. The engravings were sold by subscription from
the National Temperance League. The painting is more a panorama than a picture,
with five horizontal bands divided at the midpoint by a skeletal Medusa
on an altar raising a cup of alcohol to the crowd, while the Devil enjoins
them to imbibe. At the top the sky is fouled by the smoke from the chimneys
of breweries and distilleries. Across the second band are pubs, breweries
and all the institutions necessitated by them: a police station, a reformatory,
a house of correction, two hospitals, a cemetery, a workhouse, a jail and
a lunatic asylum. The central band contains scenes of a sailor being flogged,
a drunken picnic and a runaway locomotive. The fourth band shows interior
scenes including one of a clergyman offering wine to a Muslim and a Hindu.
The final band chronicles the major ceremonies of life at which alcohol
is customarily offered: to toast a marriage and a christening, a young man
reaching his majority, and to give comfort to grieving mourners. |
| Finish16
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George Cruikshank died February 1, 1878, at the age of 85. His desire
was to be buried in St. Paul's Cathedral, the burial place of England's
most revered artists, writers and heroes. But due to ongoing repairs at
the Cathedral, his interment there had to be delayed for some months.
George was first buried on February 8, 1878 in Kensal Green cemetery.
He was removed from Kensal Green on November 29 and interred on the west
side of the main aisle at St. Paul's. He rests not far from two of his
lifelong heroes, Lord Nelson and the Duke of Wellington. As many of his
obituaries said, George was a warrior, fighting enemies foreign and domestic
with his wit and satire. He would have relished the perpetual company
he keeps.
When he died, the journal Punch published an obituary that began,
"England is the poorer by what she can ill-spare - a man of genius.
Good, kind, genial, honest, and enthusiastic George Cruikshank has passed
away."17
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1Pierce Egan, Pierce Egan's Finish to the Adventures of Tom, Jerry, and Logic, in Their Pusuits through Line in and out of London.
{London: George Virtue, 1830), 102.
2Review of Punch and Judy, with illustrations designed and engraved by George Cruikshank, The Gentleman's Magazine, May 1828, 445.
3William Makepeace Thackeray, "George Cruikshank," The Westminster Review 34 (June - Sept. 1840): 23.
4Thackeray, 25.
5Christopher Anstey, The new Bath: guide or memoirs of the B-n-r-d family, in a series of poetical epistles (London: Henry Washbourne, 1832): 91.
6Vic Gatrell, City of Laughter: Sex and Satire in Eighteenth-Century London (New York: Walker & Company, 2007), 538.
7"The Royal Extinguisher, or the King
of Brobdingnag & the Lilliputians" Calisphere, University of California,
http://www.oac.cdlib.org/affiliates/images/grunwald/gcga_1989.21.293_1_2.jpg,
Accessed 27 January 2009.
8"George Cruikshank," Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Cruikshank, Accessed 27 January 2009.
9Egan, 262.
10Egan, 290.
11Egan, 367.
12http://imgages.google.com,
Accessed 27 January 2009.
13"Illustration" Cartoon Cornucopia, The J. Arthur Wood Jr. Collection of Cartoon Art, The Library of Congress, http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/swann/artwood/aw-illustration.html, Accessed 27 January 2009.
14http://www.intaglio-fine-art.com/images/trj105c.jpg, Accessed 27 January 2009.
15Robert L. Patten, George Cruikshank's Life, Times, and Art, vol.2: 1835-1878 (London: The Lutterworth Press, 1996): 402.
16Egan, frontispiece.
17Obituary, Punch (February 9, 1878).
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