Together Tom Hockenhull, Ian has selected nine of his favourite British satirical prints by
Gillray and Cruikshank, among others, which will go on display in this British Museum Spotlight Loan.
The main dining experience at County Hall is
Gillray's Steakhouse and Bar on the ground floor, which claims to be the best steakhouse on London's South Bank.
Rowlandson became friends with James
Gillray, the leading caricaturist in London.
There is a pleasing randomness about the selection but few items reflect satirist Jonathan Swift's adage that his art existed 'to cure the vices of mankind' better than the 18th century caricaturists such as James
Gillray, George Cruickshank and Richard Newton who mercilessly lampooned a monarchy that was hated and a market which was only too eager to lap up such sedition.
John Bowen has written that the 1820s mark a 'watershed', 'separating the frank and bawdy satirical world of
Gillray and Rowlandson from the more seemly and genially humorous comic landscape of the Victorians', (7) while Steven Jones, through his analysis of Ebenzer Elliott's poetry, has noted that there was a concerted effort to make satire less scurrilous and more 'presentable' in the 1830s.
In their usual way of mixing history with the present to illustrate how the past is not actually in the past, the Twins powerfully comment on modern day colonialism in their piece, "Eating from the same plate." The painting is a nod to James
Gillray's 1805 caricature of English statesman William Pitt and Napoleon Bonaparte carving and eating the world, "Plum Pudding in Danger."
(21) For example, Angelica Catalani in Semiramide, and the James
Gillray cartoon of Rose and Charles Didelot in Alonzo.
Which king was portrayed as Farmer George by the caricaturist James
Gillray? A George I B William IV C Charles II D George III 3.
In England, William Hogarth, Thomas Rowlandson, and James
Gillray were prominent in the development of the genre.