Never Laugh at love

AUTHOR’S NOTE

AUTHOR’S NOTEJames Gillray was the first British master draughtsman to make caricature a primary occupation and he became the most ferocious and brilliant caricaturist of his time. He was famous for his political and Social satires, mainly published between 1792 and 1810.

He was so popular that there were queues outside Miss Hannah Humphrey’s print shop, whose shop was first at 227 Strand, then in New Bond Street, then in Old Bond Street and finally in St James's Street, over which he lived, waiting for his latest cartoon. By the end of 1811, when he was still in his middle fifties, he was already half mad, the victim of hard drinking from the terrific pressure of work.

Thomas Rowlandson became friends with Gillray. He came from the comfortable middle class and had art training in Paris and at the Royal Academy of Arts.

He began as a painter of serious subjects. However he lost so much money gambling that he turned to satirical cartoons. Although popular, some of Rowlandson’s political cartoons got him into trouble and he was accused by his critics of being “coarse and indelicate”.

George Cruikshank's early career was renowned for his satirical Social caricatures of English life for popular publications. His work was thought to lack Gillray’s tremendous force and Rowlandson’s zest. He was successful in his early twenties and lived, after fifty years of aggressive teetotalism, until 1878.