Exhibition:
October 29, 2004 - January 30, 2005
Print Gallery and Stokes Gallery (Third Floor)
The golden age of English caricature, extending from the late 1770s
to the second decade of the nineteenth century, encompasses the life
of its leading exponent, James Gillray (1756–1815), who contributed
in no small measure to the brilliance and audacity of the political,
personal, and social satires of this period. Gillray subjected all the
key political figures of his day, along with the King, Queen, Prince
of Wales, and assorted aristocracy, to his witty, telling, and often
outrageous exaggerations, elaborations, and confabulations and, in the
process, transformed the then new genre of personal caricature into high
art. He was a brilliant draftsman and skilled printmaker, whose firm
grasp of the essentials of history painting, fashionable portraiture,
and contemporary romantic and “gothic” art allowed him
to burlesque those traditions, even as allusions to these sources enriched
his satires. His images, inventively interwoven with carefully worded
titles and texts, reflect his familiarity not only with current events,
issues, and scandals, but with ancient history, mythology, and contemporary
and classical literature.
At a time when the press and parliamentary reporting encouraged an active
awareness of current events and contemporary players, Gillray’s
prints commented upon the historical, political, and social events of
the day. However, his own politics, passions, and prejudices are often
elusive. He seems to have had an underlying distrust of those in power
(whether royalty or a reigning prime minister), lampooning what he perceived
as corruption, injustice, and abuse of power in public life, and the
foibles of society at large. He responded to the excesses of the French
Revolution and the ensuing, ongoing war with France by aligning himself
more or less with the King and the Tory party against the reformist and
republican sympathies of the Whig party, and received a stipend from
the Tory government for a time.
Though there was a wide audience for caricature throughout Britain and
on the Continent, Gillray’s handsome hand-colored etchings were
priced for and primarily collected by an upper-class clientele (including
the Prince of Wales). Gossip-hungry Londoners purchased satires or rented
albums of caricatures, usually viewing his prints in the privacy of the
library, where the exuberant and often outrageous images could be discreetly
enjoyed. Samuel J. Tilden (1814–1886), lawyer, New York governor,
and unsuccessful (though popularly elected) candidate for the U.S. presidency,
acquired and assembled a remarkable collection of Gillray prints and
preparatory drawings from several major English collections. These materials – some
831 prints (nearly all of Gillray’s work), along with 156 original
drawings and several letters – came to the Print Collection as
part of a bequest from the Tilden Trust, one of the cornerstones (along
with the Astor and Lenox libraries) of The New York Public Library.
This great Gillray bequest has never before been celebrated in a Library
exhibition, although individual prints and drawings have been included
in exhibitions, primarily in England, and the collection has been the
subject of considerable scholarly study. This exhibition owes a great
debt to the research of those and other scholars, among them Draper Hill,
M. Dorothy George, David Bindman, Diana Donald, Ronald Paulson, Linda
Colley, Katherine Hart, and particularly Richard Godfrey, to whose memory
this exhibition is dedicated.
Roberta Waddell
Curator of Prints, Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints
and Photographs
This exhibition has been made possible by the continuing generosity
of Miriam and Ira D. Wallach.
Acknowledgments
The curator wishes to gratefully acknowledge the contributions of those
who helped to make this exhibition possible. Many of the Gillray prints
and all of the drawings, including the very rare and highly fragile preparatory
sketches on tracing paper, received the conservation treatment necessary
for their exhibition and long-term preservation thanks to the generous
support of Leonard L. Milberg, a loyal and enlightened benefactor of The
New York Public Library.
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