Caricature and Other Comic Art in All Times and Many Lands.Parton, James
History
Caricature and Other Comic Art in All Times and Many Lands.
Parton, James
Caricature -- History
In the same year he aimed a caricature at the ministry who took off the
income tax, and lessened the taxes upon property without diminishing
those which bore more directly upon the poor. Many pictures in a similar
spirit followed; but while he was still a young man he followed the bent
of his disposition, and has ever since employed his pencil in what his
great master Hogarth once styled "moral comedies," wherein humor appears
as the ally and teacher of morals.
John Doyle, who reigned next in the shop-windows of Great Britain, and
continued to bear sway for twenty years--1829 to 1849--was not known by
name to the generation which he amused. It chanced one day that two I's,
in a printing-office where he was, stood close to two D's, and he
observed that the conjunction formed a figure resembling HB. He adopted
this as the mark or signature of his caricatures, and consequently he
was always spoken of as H. B. down to the time of his death, which
occurred about the year 1869. He, too, shared the spirit of the better
time. Collectors number his published caricatures at nine hundred and
seventeen, which have been re-issued in eleven volumes; but in none of
his works is there any thing of the savage vulgarity of the caricatures
produced during the Bonaparte wars. It was a custom with English
print-sellers to keep port-folios of his innocent and amusing pictures
to let out by the evening to families about to engage in the arduous
work of entertaining their friends at dinner. He excelled greatly in his
portraits, many of which, it is said by contemporaries, are the best
ever taken of the noted men of that day, and may be safely accepted as
historical. Brougham, Peel, O'Connell, Hume, Russell, Palmerston, and
others appear in his works as they were in their prime, with little
distortion or exaggeration, the humor of the pictures being in the
situation portrayed. Thus, after a debate in which allusion was made to
an ancient egg anecdote, HB produced a caricature in which the leaders
of parties were drawn as hens sitting upon eggs. The whole interest of
the picture lies in the speaking likenesses of the men. An air of
refinement pervades his designs. His humor is not aggressive. It was
remarked at the time in the _Westminster Review_ that the great hits of
Gillray, on being put up for the first time in Mrs. Humphrey's window,
were received by the crowd with shouts of approval, but that the
kindlier humor of HB only elicited silent smiles.
[Illustration: Box in a New York Theatre in 1830.
"I observed in the front row of a dress box a lady performing the most
maternal office possible, several gentlemen without their coats, and a
general air of contempt for the decencies of life, certainly more than
usually revolting."--MRS. TROLLOPE, _Domestic Manners of the Americans_,
vol. ii., p. 194.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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