CHAPTER XXVI

.

THE LESSER CARICATURISTS OF THE REIGN OF GEORGE III.--PAUL SANDBY.--COLLET; THE DISASTER, AND FATHER PAUL IN HIS CUPS.--JAMES SAYER; HIS CARICATURES IN SUPPORT OF PITT, AND HIS REWARD.--CARLO KHAN'S TRIUMPH.--BUNBURY; HIS CARICATURES ON HORSEMANSHIP.--WOODWARD; GENERAL COMPLAINT.--ROWLANDSON'S INFLUENCE ON THE STYLE OF THOSE WHOSE DESIGNS HE ETCHED.--JOHN KAY OF EDINBURGH: LOOKING A ROCK IN THE FACE.

The school of caricature which had grown amid the political agitation of the reigns of the two first Georges, gave birth to a number of men of greater talent in the same branch of art, who carried it to its highest degree of perfection during that of George III. Among them are the three great names of Gillray, Rowlandson, and Cruikshank, and a few who, though second in rank to these, are still well remembered for the talent displayed in their works, or with the effect they produced on contemporaries. Among these the principal were Paul Sandby, John Collet, Sayer, Bunbury, and Woodward.

Sandby has been spoken of in the last chapter. He was not by profession a caricaturist, but he was one of those rising artists who were offended by the sneering terms in which Hogarth spoke of all artists but himself, and he was foremost among those who turned their satire against him. Examples of his caricatures upon Hogarth have already been given, sufficient to show that they display skill in composition as well as a large amount of wit and humour. After his death, they were republished collectively, under the title, "Retrospective Art, from the Collection of the late Paul Sandby, Esq., R.A." Sandby was, indeed, one of the original members of the Royal Academy. He was an artist much admired in his time, but is now chiefly remembered as a topographical draughtsman. He was a native of Nottingham, where he was born in 1725,[103] and he died on the 7th of November, 1809.[104]

[103] His death is usually placed, but erroneously, in 1732.

[104] Sandby etched landscapes on steel, and in aquatinta, the latter by a method peculiarly his own, besides painting in oil and opaque colours. But his fame rests _mainly_ on being the founder of the English school of _water-colour painting_, since he was the first to show the capability of that material to produce finished pictures, and to lead the way to the perfection in effect and colour to which that branch of art has since attained.

[Illustration: _No. 213. A Disaster._]

John Collet, who also has been mentioned in a previous chapter, was born in London in 1725, and died there in 1780. Collet is said to have been a pupil of Hogarth, and there is a large amount of Hogarthian character in all his designs. Few artists have been more industrious and produced a greater number of engravings. He worked chiefly for Carrington Bowles, in St. Paul's Churchyard, and for Robert Sayers, at 53, Fleet Street. His prints published by Bowles were engraved generally in mezzotinto, and highly coloured for sale; while those published by Sayers were usually line engravings, and sometimes remarkably well executed. Collet chose for his field of labour that to which Hogarth had given the title of comedy in art, but he did not possess Hogarth's power of delineating whole acts and scenes in one picture, and he contented himself with bits of detail and groups of characters only. His caricatures are rarely political--they are aimed at social manners and social vanities and weaknesses, and altogether they form a singularly curious picture of society during an important period of the last century. The first example I give (No. 213) is taken from a line engraving, published by Sayers in 1776. At this time the natural adornments of the person in both sexes had so far yielded to artificial ornament, that even women cut off their own hair in order to replace it by an ornamental _peruque_, supporting a head-dress, which varied from time to time in form and in extravagance. Collet has here introduced to us a lady who, encountering a sudden and violent wind, has lost all her upper coverings, and wig, cap, and hat are caught by her footman behind. The lady is evidently suffering under the feeling of shame; and hard by, a cottager and his wife, at their door, are laughing at her discomfiture. A bill fixed against a neighbouring wall announces "A Lecture upon Heads."

At this time the "no-popery" feeling ran very high. Four years afterwards it broke out violently in the celebrated lord Gordon riots. It was this feeling which contributed greatly to the success of Sheridan's comedy of "The Duenna," brought out in 1775. Collet drew several pictures founded upon scenes in this play, one of which is given in our cut No. 214. It forms one of Carington Bowles's rather numerous series of prints from designs by Collet, and represents the well-known drinking scene in the convent, in the fifth scene of the third act of "The Duenna." The scene, it will be remembered, is "a room in the priory," and the excited monks are toasting, among other objects of devotion, the abbess of St. Ursuline and the blue-eyed nun of St. Catherine's. The "blue-eyed nun" is, perhaps, the lady seen through the window, and the patron saint of her convent is represented in one of the pictures on the wall. There is great spirit in this picture, which is entitled "Father Paul in his Cups, or the Private Devotions of a Convent." It is accompanied with the following lines:--

_See with these friars how religion thrives, Who love good living better than good lives; Paul, the superior father, rules the roast, His god's the glass, the blue-eyed nun his toast. Thus priests consume what fearful fools bestow, And saints' donations make the bumpers flow. The butler sleeps--the cellar door is free-- This is a modern cloister's piety._

[Illustration: _No. 214. Father Paul in his Cups._]

From Collet to Sayer we rush into the heat--I may say into the bitterness--of politics, for James Sayer is known, with very trifling exceptions, as a political caricaturist. He was the son of a captain of a merchant ship at Great Yarmouth, but was himself put to the profession of an attorney. As, however, he was possessed of a moderate independence, and appears to have had no great taste for the law, he neglected his business, and, with considerable talent for satire and caricature, he threw himself into the political strife of the day. Sayer was a bad draughtsman, and his pictures are produced more by labour than by skill in drawing, but they possess a considerable amount of humour, and were sufficiently severe to obtain popularity at a time when this latter character excused worse drawing even than that of Sayer. He made the acquaintance and gained the favour of the younger William Pitt, when that statesman was aspiring to power, and he began his career as a caricaturist by attacking the Rockingham ministry in 1782--of course in the interest of Pitt. Sayer's earliest productions which are now known, are a series of caricature portraits of the Rockingham administration, that appear to have been given to the public in instalments, at the several dates of April 6, May 14, June 17, and July 3, 1782, and bear the name of C. Bretherton as publisher. He published his first veritable caricature on the occasion of the ministerial changes which followed the death of lord Rockingham, when lord Shelburne was placed at the head of the cabinet, and Fox and Burke retired, while Pitt became chancellor of the exchequer. This caricature, which bears the title of "Paradise Lost," and is, in fact, a parody upon Milton, represents the once happy pair, Fox and Burke, turned out of their paradise, the Treasury, the arch of the gate of which is ornamented with the heads of Shelburne, the prime minister, and Dunning and Barré, two of his staunch supporters, who were considered to be especially obnoxious to Fox and Burke. Between these three heads appear the faces of two mocking fiends, and groups of pistols, daggers, and swords. Beneath are inscribed the well-known lines of Milton--

_To the eastern side Of Paradise, so late their happy seat, Waved over by that flaming brand; the gate With dreadful faces thronged and fiery arms! Some natural tears they dropt, but wiped them soon. The world was all before them, where to choose Their place of rest, and providence their guide. They, arm in arm, with wand'ring steps, and slow, Thro' Eden took their solitary way._

Nothing can be more lugubrious than the air of the two friends, Fox and Burke, as they walk away, arm in arm, from the gate of the ministerial paradise. From this time Sayer, who adopted all Pitt's virulence towards Fox, made the latter a continual subject of his satire. Nor did this zeal pass unrewarded, for Pitt, in power, gave the caricaturist the not unlucrative offices of marshal of the court of exchequer, receiver of the sixpenny duties, and cursitor. Sayer was, in fact, Pitt's caricaturist, and was employed by him in attacking successively the coalition under Fox and North, Fox's India Bill, and even, at a later period, Warren Hastings on his trial.

[Illustration: _No. 215. A Contrast._]

I have already remarked that Sayer was almost exclusively a political caricaturist. The exceptions are a few prints on theatrical subjects, in which contemporary actors and actresses are caricatured, and a single subject from fashionable life. A copy of the latter forms our cut No. 215. It has no title in the original, but in a copy in my possession a contemporary has written on the margin in pencil that the lady is Miss Snow and the gentleman Mr. Bird, no doubt well-known personages in contemporary society. It was published on the 19th of July, 1783.

One of Sayer's most successful caricatures, in regard to the effect it produced on the public, was that on Fox's India Bill, published on the 5th of September, 1783. It was entitled "Carlo Khan's Triumphal Entry into Leadenhall Street," Carlo Khan being personified by Fox, who is carried in triumph to the door of the India House on the back of an elephant, which presents the face of lord North. Burke, who had been the principal supporter of the bill in debate, appears in the character of the imperial trumpeter, and leads the elephant on its way. On a banner behind Carlo, the old inscription, "The Man of the People," the title popularly given to Fox, is erased, and the two Greek words, ΒΑΣΙΛΕΥΣ ΒΑΣΙΛΕΩΝ "king of kings," substituted in its place. From a chimney above, the bird of ill omen croaks forth the doom of the ambitious minister, who, it was pretended, aimed at making himself more powerful than the king himself; and on the side of the house just below we read the words--

_The night-crow cried foreboding luckless time._--Shakespeare.

Henry William Bunbury belonged to a more aristocratic class in society than any of the preceding. He was the second son of sir William Bunbury, Bart., of Mildenhall, in the county of Suffolk, and was born in 1750. How he first took so zealously to caricature we have no information, but he began to publish before he was twenty-one years of age. Bunbury's drawing was bold and often good, but he had little skill in etching, for some of his earlier prints, published in 1771, which he etched himself, are coarsely executed. His designs were afterwards engraved by various persons, and his own style was sometimes modified in this process. His earlier prints were etched and sold by James Bretherton, who has been already mentioned as publishing the works of James Sayer. This Bretherton was in some esteem as an engraver, and he also had a print-shop at 132, New Bond Street, where his engravings were published. James had a son named Charles, who displayed great talent at an early age, but he died young. As early as 1772, when the macaronis (the dandies of the eighteenth century) came into fashion, James Bretherton's name appears on prints by Bunbury as the engraver and publisher, and it occurs again as the engraver of his print of "Strephon and Chloe" in 1801, which was published by Fores. At this and a later period some of his designs were engraved by Rowlandson, who always transferred his own style to the drawings he copied. A remarkable instance of this is furnished by a print of a party of anglers of both sexes in a punt, entitled "Anglers of 1811" (the year of Bunbury's death). But for the name, "H. Bunbury, del.," very distinctly inscribed upon it, we should take this to be a genuine design by Rowlandson; and in 1803 Rowlandson engraved some copies of Bunbury's prints on horsemanship for Ackermann, of the Strand, in which all traces of Bunbury's style are lost. Bunbury's style is rather broadly burlesque.

[Illustration: _No. 216. How to Travel on Two Legs in a Frost._]

Bunbury had evidently little taste for political caricature, and he seldom meddled with it. Like Collet, he preferred scenes of social life, and humorous incidents of contemporary manners, fashionable or popular. He had a great taste for caricaturing bad or awkward horsemanship or unmanageable horses, and his prints of such subjects were numerous and greatly admired. This taste for equestrian pieces was shown in prints published in 1772, and several droll series of such subjects appeared at different times, between 1781 and 1791, one of which was long famous under the title of "Geoffrey Gambado's Horsemanship." An example of these incidents of horsemanship is copied in our cut No. 216, where a not very skilful rider, with a troublesome horse, is taking advantage of the state of the ground for accelerating locomotion. It is entitled, "How to travel on Two Legs in a Frost," and is accompanied with the motto, in Latin, "_Ostendunt terris hunc tantum fata, neque ultra esse sinent_."

[Illustration: _No. 217. Strephon and Chloe._]

Occasionally Bunbury drew in a broader style of caricature, especially in some of his later works. Of our examples of this broader style, the first cut, No. 217, entitled "Strephon and Chloe," is dated the 1st of July, 1801. It is the very acme of sentimental courtship, expressed in a spirit of drollery which could not easily be excelled. The next group (cut No. 218), from a similar print published on the 21st of July in the same year, is a no less admirable picture of overstrained politeness. It is entitled in the original, "The Salutation Tavern," probably with a temporary allusion beyond the more apparent design of the picture. Bunbury, as before stated, died in 1811. It is enough to say that sir Joshua Reynolds used to express a high opinion of him as an artist.

[Illustration: _No. 218. A Fashionable Salutation._]

Bunbury's prints rarely appeared without his name, and, except when they had passed through the engraving of Rowlandson, are easily recognised. No doubt his was considered a popular name, which was almost of as much importance as the print itself. But a large mass of the caricatures published at the latter end of the last century and the beginning of the present, appeared anonymously, or with imaginary names. Thus a political print, entitled "The Modern Atlas," bears the inscription "Mas^r Hook fecit;" another entitled "Farmer George delivered," has that of "Poll Pitt del." "Everybody delin^{it}," is inscribed on a caricature entitled "The Lover's Leap;" and one which appeared under the title of "Veterinary Operations," is inscribed "Giles Grinagain fect." Some of these were probably the works of amateurs, for there appear to have been many amateur caricaturists in England at that time. In a caricature entitled "The Scotch Arms," published by Fores on the 3rd of January, 1787, we find the announcement, "Gentlemen's designs executed gratis," which means, of course, that Fores would publish the caricatures of amateurs, if he approved them, without making the said amateurs pay for the engraving. But also some of the best caricaturists of the day published much anonymously, and we know that this was the case to a very great extent with such artists as Cruikshank, Woodward, &c., at all events until such time as their names became sufficiently popular to be a recommendation to the print. It is certain that many of Woodward's designs were published without his name. Such was the case with the print of which we give a copy in our cut No. 219, which was published on the 5th of May, 1796, and which bears strongly the marks of Woodward's style. The spring of this year, 1796, witnessed a general disappointment at the failure of the negociations for peace, and therefore the necessity of new sacrifices for carrying on the war, and of increased taxation. Many clever caricatures appeared on this occasion, of which this by Woodward was one. Of course, when war was inevitable, the question of generals was a very important one, and the caricaturist pretends that the greatest general of the age was "General Complaint." The general appears here with an empty purse in his right hand, and in his left a handful of papers containing a list of bankrupts, the statement of the budget, &c. Four lines beneath, in rather doggrel verse, explain the situation as follows:--

_Don't tell me of generals raised from mere boys, Though, believe me, I mean not their laurel to taint; But the general, I'm sure, that will make the most noise, If the war still goes on, will be General Complaint._

[Illustration: _No. 219. General Complaint._]

[Illustration: _No. 220. Desire._]

There was much of Bunbury's style in that of Woodward, who had a taste for the same broad caricatures upon society, which he executed in a similar spirit. Some of the _suites_ of subjects of this description that he published, such as the series of the "Symptoms of the Shop," those of "Everybody out of town" and "Everybody in Town," and the "Specimens of Domestic Phrensy," are extremely clever and amusing. Woodward's designs were also not unfrequently engraved by Rowlandson, who, as usual, imprinted his own style upon them. A very good example of this practice is seen in the print of which we give a copy in our cut No. 220. Its title, in the original, is "Desire," and the passion is exemplified in the case of a hungry schoolboy watching through a window a jolly cook carrying by a tempting plum-pudding. We are told in an inscription underneath: "Various are the ways this passion might be depicted; in this delineation the subjects chosen are simple--a hungry boy and a plum-pudding." The design of this print is stated to be Woodward's; but the style is altogether that of Rowlandson, whose name appears on it as the etcher. It was published by R. Ackermann, on the 20th of January, 1800. Woodward is well known by his prolific pencil, but we are so little acquainted with the man himself, that I cannot state the date either of his birth or of his death.

[Illustration: _No. 221. Looking a Rock in the Face._]

There lived at this time in Edinburgh an engraver of some eminence in his way, but whose name is now nearly forgotten, and, in fact, it does not occur in the last edition of Bryan's "Dictionary of Engravers." This name was John Kay, which is found attached to prints, of which about four hundred are known, with dates extending from 1784 to 1817. As an engraver, Kay possessed no great talent, but he had considerable humour, and he excelled in catching and delineating the striking points in the features and gait of the individuals who then moved in Edinburgh Society. In fact, a large proportion of his prints consist of caricature portraits, often several figures on the same plate, which is usually of small dimensions. Among them are many of the professors and other distinguished members of the university of Edinburgh. Thus one, copied in our cut No. 221, represents the eminent old geologist, Dr. James Hutton, rather astonished at the shapes which his favourite rocks have suddenly taken. The original print is dated in 1787, ten years before Dr. Hutton's death. The idea of giving faces to rocks was not new in the time of John Kay, and it has been frequently repeated. Some of these caricature portraits are clever and amusing, and they are at times very satirical. Kay appears to have rarely ventured on caricature of any other description, but there is one rare plate by him, entitled "The Craft in Danger," which is stated in a few words pencilled on the copy I have before me, to have been aimed at a cabal for proposing Dr. Barclay for a professorship in the university of Edinburgh. It displays no great talent, and is, in fact, now not very intelligible. The figures introduced in it are evidently intended for rather caricatured portraits of members of the university engaged in the cabal, and are in the style of Kay's other portraits.[105]

[105] In the library of the British Museum there is a collection of John Kay's works bound in two volumes quarto, with a title and table of contents in manuscript, but whether it is one of a few copies intended for publication, or whether it is merely the collection of some individual, I am not prepared to say. It contains 343 plates, which are stated to be all Kay's works down to the year 1813, when this collection was made. "The Craft in Danger" is not among them. I have before me a smaller, but a very choice selection, of Kay's caricatures, the loan of which I owe to the kindness of Mr. John Camden Hotten, of Piccadilly. I am indebted to Mr. Hotten for many courtesies of this description, and especially for the use of a very valuable collection of caricatures of the latter part of the eighteenth century and earlier part of the present, mounted in four large folio volumes, which has been of much use to me.

##