World Film and Television Progress (1938)

French generals, Junot and Dupont, and that of Charles XII of Sweden, all three implying dire warnings to the ambitious Corsican. Junot, who served with Napoleon in Italy and Egypt and conquered Lisbon, had been forced to evacuate Portugal the month before this cartoon appeared. Dupont, brilliantly successful at Friedland and Marengo, had met defeat early in the same year (1808). Charles XII, after successive victories in central Europe, had been defeated by Peter the Great (1709) and forced to flee to Turkey. The unrivalled genius of Gillray's work was marred in many instances by an extreme coarseness. This coarseness was not attributable to the times in which the artist lived, as was Hogarth's, but to a vulgarity that betrayed a mind wallowing in horrors, a coarseness malignant, frenzied, savage, obscene, half-insane — the symptoms of a mind which finally became incurably mad. George Cruikshank (1792-1878) drew political cartoons, but only during his youth. His social satire soon turned to illustrations and the correction of abuses such as Dickens dramatised in his novels. The most familiar and perhaps the most influential of his drawings was a series called The Bottle, which was reproduced in many countries and at many times, serving as a temperance tract. DOYLE AND THE FOUNDING OF PUNCH John Doyle, whose political caricatures first appear about 1830, began the practice of presenting a likeness, a portrait, in every caricature. In these portrait caricatures, Doyle showed not only the well-known features of his subject but the characteristic pose and mannerisms. Ever since his day, cartoonists have followed this method to a greater or less extent. To him is attributed the creation of the Punch cartoon, usually a single figure, as his son, Richard, John Leech, and John Tenniel later developed it. Punch, The London Charivari, was founded in 1841, and the day of the lithograph cartoon in England was over. John Doyle's son Richard, designed the cover of Punch as we know it now and contributed regularly to its pages until 1850, when, being an ardent Catholic, he withdrew because of the frequent use of anti-Papal material in the magazine. The drawings of John Leech (1817-1864) first appeared in Punch in 1841 and continued thereafter until his death. He was probably the most loved of English satirists. With gentle kindliness he "satirised English cant and hypocrisy, poked fun at British provincial prejudices and weaknesses, accused his fellow countrymen of selfishness and pride". He was the intimate of Thackeray, of Shirley Brooks, and John Brown, and they esteemed him as one whose wit was all the more effective because it was seldom barbed and never cruel. His most famous political cartoon appeared at a critical time in the Crimean War (1853-1856) and was called General Fe'vrier Turned Traitor. Earlier in the war Nicholas I had said that it made little difference what forces the English and French sent against his armies, because the Russians had two generals who could not be defeated — Generals January and February. In the early winter months of 1855, Nicholas died of a sudden attack of influenza. Almost at once the Leech cartoon appeared (Punch, March, 1855) showing "General Fevrier" as a skeleton dressed in the uniform of a Russian general, laying his hand on the Czar, who lies prone in the falling snow. SIR JOHN TENNIEL To Americans the name of Sir John Tenniel may first recall his cruel cartoons of Lincoln in the early days of the Civil War. Tenniel tried to make amends at the time of Lincoln's assassination with drawings of Britannia mourning with Columbia over the dead President, but the memory of his attitude toward Lincoln and the Federal cause is not a happy one. His cartoons helped to excite British contempt for the awkward, ungainly master and the cause he led, and to embitter for many years the relationship between the two countries. Tenniel's best known cartoon is Dropping the Pilot (Punch, March, 1890), which will be remembered as showing the arrogant young Wilhelm II watching, over the side of the ship of state, the departure of the veteran Bismarck whom he has just dismissed from the chancellorship. The original drawing was given to Bismarck, who prized it greatly. On the social side of the later period of English cartooning, stands the unique and incisive George du Maurier. During the period when his pencil was most active, Victorian England was given over to slavish admiration of "aesthetics" in art and literature, and to humble obsequiousness before the titled and "high born". Du Maurier's inimitable drawings laughed this cult out of existence. IN FRANCE No cartoonist of note appeared in France before the French Revolution. During certain periods before the advent of Napoleon and after his defeat much graphic satire was published, though in the interims of autocracy such demonstrations were of course sternly repressed. In this article it is possible to mention only a very few of the leading artists. Charles Philipon, "the father of comic journalism", was an ardent republican who loathed the monarchy of Charles X and cartooned that king mercilessly. Charles had entered Paris in 1814, "in the luggage of the allies" and in 1824 succeeded his brother Louis XVIII. Most of Charles's policies were influenced if not dictated by the church, and many cartoons were directed against "Charles and his Jesuits". The revolution of 1830 placed the mild Louis Philippe, son of Philippe Egalite, Due d'Orleans, as roi citoyen upon the uneasy throne. French idealism yearned, however, after republicanism. The France of Louis Philippe was filled with vague, restless notions of popular rights and sovereignty, with thwarted desires and unsatisfied public needs. As always in times of discontent, cartoons were numerous and acrid. As his fond subjects declared, the citizen king was "nothing to boast of" in appearance. His fat and pendulous jowls, narrow forehead with small eyes close together, his toupet and whiskers, lent them selves admirably to the cartoonist's art. Philipon had founded in 1831 a short-lived magazine called Caricature, which was followed soon after its demise by Charivari, the "comic" magazine on which Punch, the London Charivari, was modelled. The doctrinaire Philipon gathered about him a group of "garret revolutionaries", of whom the greatest was Honore Daumier. Their trenchant pencils made history. In Charivari, Philipon sketched Louis Philippe with a pear for a head. The device struck the popular fancy and week after week he and his confreres rang the changes on that theme. "La Poire" appeared on billboards, in lithographs, everywhere that public attention might wander. Nearly every drawing which came from this group used the pear as a motif. Daumier was renowned for having "served up the pear with the greatest variety of sauces". Unwisely the government prosecuted Philipon for lese-majeste. Haled into court he is said to have sat making four sketches — the first, a true drawing of the king. This he held up to the jury — "Gentlemen, this resembles the king. Do you condemn it?" The second sketch showed the toupet and whiskers "flowing together" and a vague outline of a pear suggesting itself. The third had the distinct shape of a pear, but still resembled the king, while the fourth was a drawing of an ordinary Burgundy pear. Holding up the fourth sketch, Philipon remarked blandly: "If you are consistent, gentlemen, you cannot acquit this sketch for it certainly resembles the other three". Philipon was fined nevertheless, and later Daumier was imprisoned on the same charge. Philipon and Daumier had their revenge, however. The "pear", with some later cartoons picturing Louis Philippe as Bluebeard about to murder his newest wife, "Constitution", and other drawings satirising the members of Louis's cabinet, literally laughed the roi citoyen off his throne. Daumier, the greatest of the Charivari group, was at first a satirist of manners. He himself apparently hated his cartoons which the people loved. He served Charivari until his eyesight failed (1872) except during three years when he devoted himself to painting (1860-1863). Painting was the art he loved and for that he vainly sought public recognition. Only after his death was his greatness as a painter recognised. Daumier's cartoons of 1848, of the '50's and of the Commune, show clearly how difficult it was for him to rejoice over revolutions when he hated the inevitable excesses. When the Third Republic was established, this artist was of inestimable service to the new unstable government. He had lived through three monarchies, two republics, and an empire; his opinions were respected and influential ; he was personally beloved, from day to day he pictured scenes which reminded the wavering citizens of what they had suffered under the empire and what they had to hope for under a republican regime. There were other notable French cartoonists. Gavarni of this same period who in 1831 published his only noteworthy political cartoons in La Mode. Gavami's technique was excellent, but as Ashbee remarked, "fine 21