Description
George Cruikshank’s (1792-1878) etchings and wood-engravings graced the pages of such classics as Grimms’ Fairy Tales and Dickens’ Oliver Twist, campaigned in the propaganda war against Napoleon, and satirised his times, becoming representative of the age. His life crossed paths with Britain’s primary political, social, and cultural leaders, yet he experienced a long struggle for recognition of his imaginative, versatile and incisive images.
In the first documentary biography of Cruikshank, Robert Platten reviews thousands of unpublished letters and printed images to construct a thorough and reliable account of the artist’s extraordinary career. Placing Cruikshank’s achievements in the contexts of the traditions of figuration practiced by his contemporaries and the social productions of nineteenth-century Britain, Patten’s book is a valuable contribution to the interactions between high and low art, texts and pictures, politics and imagination. This first volume focusses on the artist’s regency caricatures and early book illustrations and offers the specialist and general reader an in-depth study of this remarkable artist.
In the concluding volume of this comprehensive biography, Patten examines Cruikshank’s collaborations with renowned writers such as Harrison Ainsworth, Charles Dickens, and William Makepeace Thackeray. Focussing on his illustrated periodicals, including the long-standing Comic Almanack, as well as his advocacy of Temperance, Patten sketches the context of Cruikshank’s art through his subjects, motifs, mediums, treatments, publishers and audiences. Engaging with the contradictory and crisis-filled latter years of Cruikshank’s life, Patten reveals the great artist’s refashioning in the Victorian Era.
About the Author
Robert L. Patten is the Lynette S. Autrey Professor Emeritus of Humanities at Rice University, and writes primarily about Victorian literature, graphic arts, and print culture, including multiple books about Charles Dickens.
Contents
George Cruikshank’s Life, Times and Art, Volume I: 1792 – 1835
Illustrations
Preface: To the Reader
Acknowledgements
Chronology
Prologue
Phase 1: “Cradled in Caricature,” 1792-1820
1 What’s in a Name?
2 All My Relatives Were Scots
3 A Naughty Boy
4 A Picture of Fife
5 What Can You Do, If Your Pelvis is Wrong?
6 George Cruikshank Invenit
7 Too Much Fun of Too Many Things
8 The Pursuit and Torment of “Little Boney”
9 “Twit, Twittle, Twit”: The Trials of William Hone
10 The Most Important Design I Ever Made
11 The Dandy of Sixty
12 A Very Tar in Art
Phase 2: “The Finest Things, Next To Rembrandt’s,” 1820-1835
13 Late Hours, Blue Ruin, and Dollies
14 Epigrams of Design
15 A Thorough-bred Artist
16 A Sketching Dante
17 To Work – “With a Will”
18 A Work Begun in Sadness
19 Indestructible as Punch
20 Thumbnail Designs
21 An “Average-European” Style
22 Drawing in Albums
23 Prince of Humorous Designers
24 The Arch and Able Pencil
Genealogies
Concerning Transcriptions and References
Notes
General Index
Index of Cruikshank’s Works
George Cruikshank’s Life, Times and Art, Volume II: 1835-1878
Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Chronology
Phase 3: “Immortal George,” 1835-1851
25. Middle-Class Characters
26. A Picture of Every-Day London
27. Oliver Twist and the “Apples of Discord”
28. Almost in Love with Roguery
29. The Tower! Is the Word—Forward to the Tower!
30. The “Hoc” Goes Down
31. The Triumph of Cupid
32. Portraits of the Artist
33. Masterpieces Worthy of the Greatest Painter
34. England is not California
35. I am Become a Name
36. Losing by Almost Every Speculation
Phase 4: “George Cruikshank, Artist,” 1851-1878
37. Hitting Right and Left
38. Whole Hogism
39. Knock Down Blows
40. Write Me Down an Ass
41. The Volunteers
42. Diagrams of Drunkenness
43. Surely There Never Were Such Times!!!
44. I am Looked Upon as a Fanatic
45. Celtic Strains
46. Disappointment… on Disappointment
47. The Venerable George
48. George the 1st and Last
Epilogue
Genealogy
Emendata
Concerning Transcriptions and References
Notes
Bibliography
General Index
Index of Cruikshank’s Works
About the Author
Endorsements and Reviews
George Cruikshank’s Life, Times and Art, Volume I: 1792 – 1835
They illustrate the close connection between archaeology, architectural history, historical geography and economic history which runs throughout the book and is the hall-mark of the Deserted Medieval Village Group. R. H. C. Davis in The English Historical Review, Vol. 88, No. 349, October, 1973, pp. 886-887
This volume examines the uses to which Cruikshank put his remarkable skills of delineating frenetic action, agitated and contorted extremities, phrenological types contrasted in superimposed rows or in overcrowded rooms, and political leaders driven diabolically to undermine the state. Carl Woodring in The Wordsworth Circle, Vol. 25, No. 4, Autumn, 1994, pp. 228-229
Ultimately, it is to be highly recommended to the general reader, both as a study of an individual and for the picture of a London in transition which emerges, while, together with the forthcoming second volume, it will be appreciated by the student of nineteenth-century book illustration and of the nineteenth-century printing and publishing trades. Eirwen Nicholson in History, Vol. 78, No. 254, October, 1993, pp. 521-522
Master of both the medium and the message, Patten delves into the technical, the business, the historical, the aesthetic, and the comic aspects of Cruikshank’s work from the early 1800s to the First Reform Bill. His grasp of the etcher’s technique seems as firm as his knowledge of Cruikshank’s myriad business deals with publishers, printers, and writer. L. Perry Curtis Jr., in Victorian Studies, Vol. 38, No. 2, Winter, 1995, pp.279-282
If the ‘times’ element is less complete and satisfactory than the analysis of Cruikshank’s life and art, Patten’s Cruikshank is much more than a useful reference work for a most prolific and versatile artist. Marc Baer in Print Quarterly, Vol.10, No. 3, 1993, pp. 295-296
To read the first volume of Robert Patten’s new biography of George Cruikshank is to find the treasure that visitors to the labyrinthine ways of nine-teenth-century graphic art search for: a thorough, accurate, entertaining guide that provides a new perspective, not only on Cruikshank, but on matters as diverse as the aesthetics and the politics of caricature. Patricia Marks in Victorian Periodicals Review, Winter, 1994, Vol. 27, No. 4, Winter, 1994, pp.377-380
Professor Patten conveys a wealth of information, including the most detailed notes on print and publication, without abandoning either enthusiasm or judgement. Quentin Blake in RSA Journal, December 1992, Vol. 141, No.5435, pp. 57-58
George Cruikshank’s Life, Times and Art Volume II: 1835 – 1878
Robert Patten, in his two-volume George Cruikshank’s Life, Times, and Art, creates an authoritative source for the new century. Catherine J.Golden in Victorian Studies, Vol. 40, No.4, Summer, 1997, pp. 680-682
Bob Patter’s second volume on George Cruikshank has all the virtues of the first: immense detail about Cruikshank’s life, incisive analysis of his art, intelligent treatment of historical context, and a fine number and choices of illustrations – reproduced more satisfactorily than some of the caricatures in volume one. Michael Steig in Dickens Quarterly, Vol. 14, No. 2, June, 1997, pp. 118-122
