#James Gillray

[random-brushstrokes]

James Gillray - Fashionable contrasts; -or- the duchess's little shoe yielding to the magnitude of the duke's foot (1792)

[empirearchives]

Me: *feels guilty about reading the private love letters of historical figures which can get pretty intimate at times*

Also me:

[guy60660]

James Gillray | Public Domain Review

[mysterious-secret-garden]

James Gillray - Shakespeare Sacrificed, 1789.

[lordansketil]

The Prince of Wales, wearing the uniform of his light dragoon regiment, rides Lord Jersey to a bed where Lady Jersey awaits him. (1796)

Fashionable jockeyship. Nobody does it like James Gillray.

[werewolfetone]

That one James Gillray cartoon that I just reblogged a video about is the most famous but that's a shame because that particular drawing does not even come close to representing how insane your average cartoon by Gillray is. for instance here is something that he drew to warn people about what was going to happen if the French Revolution was replicated in Britain,

[clove-pinks]

James Gillray, The bow of a three-decker; part of a ship with figure-head at left. Pen and grey ink, with grey and pale buff wash, made 1772-1794 (British Museum).

Adam Smith had a lot of interesting things to say about sailors in The Wealth of Nations (1776):

The lottery of the sea is not altogether so disadvantageous as that of the army. The son of a creditable laborer or artificer may frequently go to sea with his father's consent; but if he enlists as a soldier, it is always without it.

But he dates himself with statements like: "The great admiral is less the object of public admiration than the great general; and the highest success in the sea service promises a less brilliant fortune and reputation than equal success in the land." (Obviously this is before the Royal Navy was respectable enough to have a king's son as a midshipman, and other aristocracy who crowded its ranks post-Battle of Trafalgar).

After a mention of sea captains being less in "common estimation" than army colonels, this passage about sailors rings true for the early 19th century:

Common sailors, therefore, more frequently get some fortune and preferment than common soldiers; and the hope of those prizes is what principally recommends the trade. Though their skill and dexterity are much superior to that of almost any artificers, and though their whole life is one continual scene of hardship and danger, yet for all this dexterity and skill, for all those hardships and dangers, while they remain in the condition of common sailors, they receive scarce any other recompense but the pleasure of exercising the one and of surmounting the other. Their wages are not greater than those of common laborers at the port which regulates the rate of seamen's wages.

Thomas Rowlandson, Ships and Sailors (late 18th century-early 19th century), The Met.

[heracliteanfire]

A great Stream from a Petty-Fountain;-or-John Bull swamped in the flood of new-taxes:-cormorants fishing in the stream.

Satirical print, James Gillray, 1806.

(via British Museum)

[tratadista]

James Gillray

[kecobe]

Modern Grace, or, The Operatical Finale to the Ballet of Alonzo e Caro James Gillray (British; 1756–1815) Hand-colored etching on wove paper, 1796 Yale University Library, The Lewis Walpole Library, Farmington, Connecticut

Publisher: Hannah Humphrey, New Bond Street, London

“Didelot dances on the stage between two women, both very lightly clad in quasi-classical costume, and wearing ‘cothurnes.’ He wears a feathered hat, tunic, and cloak, and looks towards Mme Parisot (right); she strikes an attitude with right leg raised and arms extended, and looks alluringly towards him, her right breast bare. Mme Rose (left), his wife, dances with more restraint, her sharp-featured profile turned austerely towards her husband. All wave their arms above their heads, and their attitudes are in fact graceful (though caricatured). Two plump ‘danseuses’ (left and right) whirl on one toe in the background. Behind Didelot is an irradiated sun, with features looking down disapprovingly at the dancer.” — British Museum online catalogue

[amoebasareverysmall]

[wordycheeseblob]

If caricatures, which aside from social commentary were seen as powerful political tools, can be considered as a predecesor of memes, by that logic

Napoleon was defeated by a Meme Lord.

True story. In a way, James Gillray did what many generals in Europe couldn't creating a myth that perpetuated the image of a tiny little man with a short fuse in the minds of people centuries later.

[empirearchives]

Historian Alice Loxton explaining this political satire of Napoleon and William Pitt the Younger, 1805, by James Gillray. Displayed at the London Original Print Fair.

She calls it “one of the most famous political cartoons ever made.”

[pitt-able]

No, that is a wonderful summary and I have nothing more to add. Or maybe one thing; it is not at all impossible that Pitt himself owned a copy of the print. He was known to collect some of Gillray's prints, both works that featured and did not feature him.

[mysterious-secret-garden]

James Gillray - A Peep into the Cave of Jacobinism, or Magna est Veritas et praevalebit, 1798.

[lordansketil]

Emma, Lady Hamilton performed her classically-inspired 'attitudes' from 1787 to audiences of invited guests in Naples, where her husband Sir William was British Envoy. In 1794 the attitudes were the subject of a set of engravings by Tommaso Piroli, here printed on ochre prepared paper to echo the Greek vase paintings on which Lady Hamilton based her act. Piroli’s prints (and implicitly Lady Hamilton, by then resident back in London) were mocked by James Gillray in an 1807 series showing the renowned beauty as an ungainly frump. Both sets were purchased by the future George IV, the Pirolis from Colnaghi in 1816, the satires from Hannah Humphrey on publication in 1807.

Guys, he bought the satires first. You cannot convince me that Prinny bought them because he thought they made Emma Hamilton look like "an ungainly frump". He probably thought she looked amazing.