James Gillray and the Art of Derision

Gillray on…Royalty and Aristocracy.

Gillray’s work was almost unprecedented for the caustic way in which it decried the royal family. Although caricaturing the monarchy was not invented by Gillray, he brought the act to a daring and personal level.

His depictions of the hapless King George III are among his most humorous and famous works. Gillray exploited George III’s reputation for austerity and miserliness unbefitting of his status. Moreover, the King’s bouts of madness and his reputedly ugly and dull wife, Queen Charlotte, were a gift to the Georgian caricaturist. Gillray made full use of his skills in exaggerating her goggling eyes and pointed chin.

In contrast, their son, the Prince of Wales, detested his parents and their lifestyle, and lived a life of debauchery and excess. This was equally a source of ridicule in Gillray’s work.

However, following the beginning of hostilities with France in 1793, Gillray moderated his attitude towards the royal family. Although the English nation was represented most frequently by the fictional John Bull, George III occasionally stood in a proxy, portrayed in a simple, yet affable and harmless manner as ‘Farmer George.’

Not only was Gillray concerned with political events of the time, he was also enthralled by the absurd antics and follies of the Georgian aristocracy. In particular, the fops and society figures who frequented the area of London around Bond Street and St. James. Gillray lived in the area and found it captivating to observe this foolish behaviour and recreate it in ludicrous images in his own inimitable, ruthless style. His subjects, in a suitably egotistic manner, were more than eager to purchase the unrelenting prints.

James Gillray: The Man Behind the Mischief…

James Gillray (1756 – 1815) was a caricaturist of unparalleled popularity and international repute during and after his lifetime. Active during the tempestuous ‘Age of Revolution’, he built on the tradition of visual satire and himself revolutionised the art of personal caricature, skewering the recognisable elite and everyday with his acerbic and sometimes controversial craft and wit.

Born into a strict Moravian home in Chelsea, James Gillray’s early life was joyless and austere. His artistic skill, however, become clearly visible from a very early age. He gained an apprenticeship as an engraver and in 1778 was admitted to the Royal Academy Schools in London. Although initially attempting to distance himself from the ‘low’ form of satirical art, the monotony of ‘serious’ artistic work and the public appetite for the bawdy drew him to the style that would define (and be defined by) him.

These works of satire often depicted scenes which could be described as vulgar and somewhat pornographic in nature, showing perverse scenes in and around seedy, low-life establishments. He was also gifted material in the political strife and aristocratic melodramas of the times on both sides of the Atlantic. His personal, instantly recognisable caricatures of ‘celebrities’ such as Napoleon, King George III, William Pitt the Younger, and the symbolic figure of John Bull were a particular forte.

Working with several London publishers, Gillray’s more popular images were housed and sold by Hannah Humphrey, with whom the artist lodged and was reputed to have had a personal involvement with. She became the exclusive seller of his prints from 1791.

His personal character, perhaps fuelled by memories of his severe upbringing, was, in stark contrast to his art, morose and solitary, exacerbated by an excessive drinking habit. His health became affected, impacting on the quality and quantity of his output, and by about the end of 1811 he sank almost into imbecility. He died on 1st June 1815 aged 58 years old.