Cathy's Art Diary

Jovial online lecture from ARTscapades on Gillray cartoons on four famous Georgian socialites. The author Tim Clayton led us through a series of cartoons of these four women pointing out Gillray's defined caricatures of each of the women which then made this instantly recognisable to viewers and buyers. There was an interesting look at the print culture of the time and the descriptions of the images were fascinating but I would have liked to have had a bit more context. It’s not a period of history I know well so it would have been good to have an overview of who the women were and why they were important enough to be lampooned.  

Interesting exhibition at the Cartoon Museum looking at the work of the 18th century satirist, James Gillray and the influence he has had on subsequent generations. It was useful to see this so soon after the show at the Queen’s Gallery on Thomas Rowlandson as they covered roughly the same period. I must admit I preferred Rowlandson as I found Gillray crueller but I think that is the difference between a cartoonist and a satirist. This exhibition was however quite different in that it mainly looked at Gillray’s influence so there were lots of examples of where modern satirists such as Steve Bell quoted and reused earlier images by Gillray. The main example used was the Plum Pudding in Danger which Gillary had used to show Pitt and Napoleon carving up Europe in the guise of a big pudding. Later examples showed Johnson and Kosygin, Blair and Kohl, Blair and Chirac, Cameron and Sarkozy and many more! It just shows that nothing changes! I hadn’t realised that Gilray inven...