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George Cruikshank

 
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George Cruikshank (27 September, 1792 – 1 February, 1878) was an English
England

native_name =|conventional_long_name = England|common_name = England|image_flag = Flag of England.svg|image_coat = England COA.svg|symbol_type = Royal Coat of Arms...
 caricaturist and book illustrator, praised as the "modern Hogarth
William Hogarth

William Hogarth was a major England painting, Printmaking, pictorial satire, Social criticism and editorial cartoonist who has been credited with pioneering western sequential art....
" during his life. Born in London
London

London is the capital of both England and the United Kingdom, and the most populous municipality in the European Union. An important settlement for two millennia, History of London goes back to its founding by the Roman Empire....
, he was a member of the Cruikshank family of caricaturists and artists, the son of Scottish
Scotland

conventional_long_name = ScotlandAlba|common_name= Scotland|image_flag = Flag of Scotland.svg|flag_width = 130px...
 painter and caricaturist Isaac Cruikshank
Isaac Cruikshank

Isaac Cruikshank , Scottish painter and caricaturist, was born in Edinburgh. His sons Isaac Robert Cruikshank and George Cruikshank also became artists, and the latter in particular achieved fame as an illustrator and caricaturist....
.

kshank's early career was renowned for his social caricatures of English life for popular publications such as The Comic Almanack (1835-1853) and Omnibus (1842) but later in his career, his book illustrations for Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens

Charles John Huffam Dickens, Royal Society of Arts , pen-name "Boz", was the most popular English people novelist of the Victorian era, as well as a vigorous Reform movement....
 and many other authors reached an international audience.

He created folios of prints with moralistic themes inspired by the temperance movement
Temperance movement

A temperance movement attempts to reduce the amount of alcohol consumed within a community or society in general -- and even to prohibit its production and consumption entirely....
.






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Cruikshank Portrait
George Cruikshank (27 September, 1792 – 1 February, 1878) was an English
England

native_name =|conventional_long_name = England|common_name = England|image_flag = Flag of England.svg|image_coat = England COA.svg|symbol_type = Royal Coat of Arms...
 caricaturist and book illustrator, praised as the "modern Hogarth
William Hogarth

William Hogarth was a major England painting, Printmaking, pictorial satire, Social criticism and editorial cartoonist who has been credited with pioneering western sequential art....
" during his life. Born in London
London

London is the capital of both England and the United Kingdom, and the most populous municipality in the European Union. An important settlement for two millennia, History of London goes back to its founding by the Roman Empire....
, he was a member of the Cruikshank family of caricaturists and artists, the son of Scottish
Scotland

conventional_long_name = ScotlandAlba|common_name= Scotland|image_flag = Flag of Scotland.svg|flag_width = 130px...
 painter and caricaturist Isaac Cruikshank
Isaac Cruikshank

Isaac Cruikshank , Scottish painter and caricaturist, was born in Edinburgh. His sons Isaac Robert Cruikshank and George Cruikshank also became artists, and the latter in particular achieved fame as an illustrator and caricaturist....
.

Social caricatures and illustrations

1844 Cruikshank Oliver Twist
Cruikshank's early career was renowned for his social caricatures of English life for popular publications such as The Comic Almanack (1835-1853) and Omnibus (1842) but later in his career, his book illustrations for Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens

Charles John Huffam Dickens, Royal Society of Arts , pen-name "Boz", was the most popular English people novelist of the Victorian era, as well as a vigorous Reform movement....
 and many other authors reached an international audience.

He created folios of prints with moralistic themes inspired by the temperance movement
Temperance movement

A temperance movement attempts to reduce the amount of alcohol consumed within a community or society in general -- and even to prohibit its production and consumption entirely....
. The best known of these are The Bottle, 8 plates (1847), with its sequel, The Drunkard's Children, 8 plates (1848), with the ambitious work, The Worship of Bacchus, published by subscription after the artist's oil painting, now in the National Gallery, London
National Gallery, London

The National Gallery in London, founded in 1824, houses a rich collection of over 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900 in its home on Trafalgar Square....
.

For Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens

Charles John Huffam Dickens, Royal Society of Arts , pen-name "Boz", was the most popular English people novelist of the Victorian era, as well as a vigorous Reform movement....
, Cruikshank illustrated Sketches by Boz
Sketches by Boz

Sketches by Boz is a collection of short pieces published by Charles Dickens in 1836. Dickens' career as a writer of fiction truly began with this collection in 1833, when he started writing humorous sketches for The Morning Chronicle, using the pen-name "Boz"....
 (1836), The Mudfog Papers
The Mudfog Papers

The Mudfog Papers was written by Victorian era novelist Charles Dickens and published from 1837 – 38 in the monthly literary serial Bentley's Miscellany, which he then Editing....
 (1837–38) and Oliver Twist
Oliver Twist

Oliver Twist is Charles Dickens second novel. The book was originally published in Bentley's Miscellany as a Serial , in monthly installments that began appearing in the month of February 1837 and continued through April 1839, originally intended to form part of Dickens' serial The Mudfog Papers....
 (1838). On 30 December 1871 Cruikshank published a letter in The Times which claimed credit for much of the plot of Oliver Twist. The letter launched a fierce controversy around who created the work. While Dickens was the author, Cruikshank developed many ideas like those that appeared in the book and it is difficult -- if not impossible -- to distinguish his concepts from those of Dickens, which were developed at the same time.

Political caricatures

Lordfitz
Clonard
Copperplate engraving published in The Comic Almanack for 1841 Cruikshank’s 60-year career began with political prints that attacked the royal family and leading politicians (in 1820 he received a royal bribe of £100 for a pledge "not to caricature His Majesty" (George IV of the United Kingdom
George IV of the United Kingdom

George IV was the king of Kingdom of Hanover and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from the death of his father, George III of the United Kingdom, on 29 January 1820 until his own death ten years later....
) "in any immoral situation" . His work included a personification of England named John Bull
John Bull

John Bull is a national personification of the United Kingdom in general and England in particular, originating in the creation of Dr. John Arbuthnot in 1712, and popularised first by British print makers and then overseas by illustrators and writers such as American cartoonist Thomas Nast and Irish writer George Bernard Shaw, author of '...
 who was developed from about 1790 in conjunction with other British satirical artists such as James Gillray
James Gillray

James Gillray, sometimes spelled Gilray , was a United Kingdom caricaturist and printmaker famous for his etching political and social satires, mainly published between 1792 and 1810....
, and Thomas Rowlandson
Thomas Rowlandson

Thomas Rowlandson was an English artist and caricaturist....
.

Cruikshank replaced one of his major influences, James Gillray
James Gillray

James Gillray, sometimes spelled Gilray , was a United Kingdom caricaturist and printmaker famous for his etching political and social satires, mainly published between 1792 and 1810....
, as England's most popular satirist. For a generation he delineated Tories, Whigs
British Whig Party

The Whigs are often described as one of two political party in Kingdom of England and later the United Kingdom from the late 17th to the mid-19th centuries....
 and Radicals impartially. Satirical material came to him from every public event—wars abroad, the enemies of Britain (he was highly patriotic), the frolic, among other qualities, such as the weird and terrible, in which he excelled. His hostility to enemies of Britain and a crude racism is evident in his illustrations commissioned to accompany William Maxwell's
William Hamilton Maxwell

William Hamilton Maxwell was a Ulster Scots people novelist.He was born at Newry, and educated at Trinity College, Dublin. He claimed to have entered the British Army and seen service in the Peninsular War and the Battle of Waterloo, but this is generally believed to be untrue....
 History of the Irish rebellion in 1798 (1845) where his lurid depictions of incidents in the rebellion
Irish Rebellion of 1798

The Irish Rebellion of 1798 , or 1798 rebellion as it is known locally, was an uprising in 1798, lasting several months, against United Kingdom and its subject Kingdom of Ireland....
 were characterised by the simian
Simian

The simians are the "higher primates" familiar to most people: the monkeys and the apes, including humans. Simians tend to be larger than the "lower primates" or prosimians....
-like portrayal of Irish rebels.

Among the other racially engaged works of Cruikshank there were caricatures about the "legal barbarities" of the Chinese, the subject given by his friend, Dr. W. Gourley, a participant in the ideological battle around the Arrow War
Second Opium War

The Second Opium War, the Second Anglo-Chinese War, the Arrow War, or the Anglo-French expedition to China, was a war of the British Empire and the Second French Empire against the Qing Dynasty of China from 1856-1860....
, 1856-60.

[1] Gatrell, Vic. City of Laughter: Sex and Satire in Eighteenth-Century London. New York: Walker & Co., 2006

Further reading


  • Cruikshank, George. (1980). Graphic Works of George Cruikshank. Dover Publications. ISBN 0-486-23438-X
  • Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires Preserved in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum, Mary Dorothy George. Vol VI 1938, Vol VII, 1942 VOL VIII 1947, VOL IX 1949
  • Dictionary of British Cartoonists and caricaturists 1730-1980 Bryant and Heneage, Scolar Press 1994
  • The Book Illustrations of George Cruikshank Buchanan-Brown, John. Charles Tuttle 1980
  • George Cruikshank A Catalogue Raisonne of the work executed surign the years 1896-1977 Cohn, Albert M . Bookmans Journal, London 1924
  • JK Rowling, the creator of the popular of the Harry Potter series used his second name to inspire the cat belonging to Hermione Granger
    Hermione Granger

    Hermione Jean Granger is a fictional character in J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series. She initially appears in the first novel, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, as a new student on her way to magic school....
    , who is called     Crookshanks.


External links

  • at
  • (Commercial site)
  • fully and openly available through the
  • from the Woodson Research Center at Rice University