Caricaturist

“ Surely it is not too much to ask, even for a caricaturist to ask—for such he somewhat scornfully terms me—that when so powerful a personality as a leader writer levels his pen against an individual, however humble, he should not depend upon the report of another newspaper, the exigencies of whose space naturally prevent, it may be assumed, the devotion of more than a column verbatim report to any utterances of a 'mere caricaturist.' But, frankly, does the nature of my own occupation in the arts preclude me from pronouncing a correct judgment on portraits and portraiture? ”

“ Here, however, the test of the caricaturist is revealed, for while there are many who can perceive and hit off the obvious superficial traits of those who present themselves as ready-made subjects, the genuine caricaturist combines a profound sense of character with such a [111] gift of humour as will enable him to rise above the mere perception of idiosyncrasy or foible, and actually to translate into terms of comedy a psychological knowledge unsuspected by those who uncritically perceive and delight in the finished caricature. ”

“ The quarry of The Caricaturist will be literature, science, and art. Instead of wasting artistic genius upon such small fry as premiers, diplomatists, and cabinet ministers, our cartoons will be caricatures of the pictures of Millais, Leighton, Burne-Jones, Rossetti, Madox Brown, Holman Hunt, Watts, Sandys, Whistler, Wilderspin: our letterpress will be Aristophanic parodies of Tennyson, Browning, Meredith, Arnold, Morris, Swinburne; game worth flying at, my boy! ”

“ Just as a subject may offer great temperamental difficulties, [114] so it frequently happens that—for some inexplicable reason—he will at once afford an opening which a practised caricaturist will know immediately how to turn to account. It is this element of chance which lends a charming uncertainty to the caricaturist's art; and it is this element also which explains in many cases the strange success or failure of an impression, the apparent fluctuations of an artist's talent in preserving a likeness or translating a personality into terms of comedy. ”

“ We shall now understand the comic element in caricature. However regular we may imagine a face to be, however harmonious its lines and supple its movements, their adjustment is never altogether perfect: there will always be discoverable the signs of some impending bias, the vague suggestion of a possible grimace, in short some favourite distortion towards which nature seems to be particularly inclined. The art of the caricaturist consists in detecting this, at times, imperceptible tendency, and in rendering it visible to all eyes by magnifying it. ”

“ Joseph Keppler who, as an American cartoonist and caricaturist, has not only imposed its canons and traditions upon this country, but has, in so doing, placed himself at its head, both in this country and in Europe, by virtue of a genius that has made him eminent above the generation of his masters.
The spirit of French comic art turns distinctly—and delightfully—to caricature. The French “cartoon”—the pictorial lampoon, that is—has but to exhibit in an exaggerated form the objectionable characteristics of an individual, to serve its purpose and to touch its public. ”

“ In looking through the volumes of Punch one is apt to forget that the strong situations and stirring events by which a caricaturist's hit is made effective at the time of publication fade from one's memory. The cartoon in all its strength remains a record of an event which has lost its interest. ”

“ All the men who are distinguished in political life become so familiar to the readers of "Punch" in their caricatures, that we know them at sight. Even those who can claim no such public distinction are occasionally the subjects of the caricaturist, as some of us have found out for ourselves. A good caricature, which seizes the prominent features and gives them the character Nature hinted, but did not fully carry out, is a work of genius. ”

“ I confess as a caricaturist, surely I need not caricature my confessions by any mock-modesty. Although I have illustrated novels, short stories, fairy tales, poems, parodies, satires, and jeux d'esprit, for the realistic, the fanciful, the weirdly imaginative and the broadly humorous, as my Punch colleague, E. T. Milliken, wrote, my more distinctive, natural and favourite métier is that of graphic art. This intimate friend, in publishing his "appreciation" of me, put in his own too highly-coloured opinion of my black and white work in this direction. ”

“ Of his talent as a caricaturist there can never be any question. He had the rare power of finding an equation for every face, summarising in a few lines its salient points of oddity. And this same power he exhibited in his shrewd judgment of character. At a dinner-table little that was characteristic escaped his humorous regard. Though alien born, and almost jealously retaining to the end of his life amongst us his individuality as a foreigner, he possessed a quick and just appreciation of our national characteristics, more especially as they lent themselves to humorous portrayal. ”

“ The work of an amateur artist possessing a distinct vein of humour is, in my opinion, far more entertaining than that of the professional caricaturist, the former being absolutely spontaneous and untrammelled by the conscientiousness of subsequent publication, of correct draughtsmanship, made only from impressions of the moment, and not the effort (as in the case of many a professional humorist) of having to be funny to order. ”

“ THE LAST VISIT OF LORD BEACONSFIELD TO THE HOUSE.
[Pg 162]
[Pg 163]
MR. GLADSTONE. A SKETCH FROM LIFE.
A caricaturist is an artistic contortionist. He is grotesque for effect. A contortionist twists and distorts himself to cause amusement, but he is by nature straight of limb and a student of grace before he can contort his body in burlesque of the "human form divine." Thus also is it with the caricaturist and his pencil. The good points of his subject must be plainly apparent to him before he can twist his study into the grotesque ”

“ What at first constituted the originality of English caricaturists was their mordant satire. Everything was painted in exceedingly vivid colours. Whatever was calculated to bring out an idea in comic or brutal relief—great heads and little bodies, an absurd similarity between persons and animals, the afflorescence of costume—was seized upon eagerly. These artists fought for the weary and heavy-laden, and mercilessly lashed the cut-throats and charlatans. They delighted in spontaneous obscenity, exuberant vigour, and undisguised coarseness. ”

“ Want is the scorn of every wealthy fool; And genius in rags is turned to ridicule.—Juv. Sat.
The head of the caricaturist is strongly defined on the shoulders of the gifted occupant of a garret, and the likeness is just what might be supposed from the countenance, as given in 1787, viewed through the intervening quarter of a century of struggles, and disenchantments, when cares of the hour, and incidental anxieties, touching provision for the future, had commenced to take the place of the artist's original careless hardihood. ”

“ The caricaturist was never for a moment secure, sleeping or waking; until he trembled at the opening of a door or the ringing of a bell. It was a terrible state of things, not unlike the great plague.
Then caricatures began to appear in The Retaliator of their relations—their mothers, and aunts, and cousins. Several caricaturists emigrated, some sank under it, some became hopelessly imbecile and had to retire to asylums. The page for the cartoon in the comic paper appeared as a blank sheet week after week, no new spirit being found bold enough to take up the pencil dropped from the old hand. ”

“ But the debasement of human nature which he saw in London appears to have affected him so forcibly that from that time the cheerful caricaturist never laughed or made others laugh again. What he had witnessed there became the almost exclusive subject of his drawings, as powerful, as impressive as ever, but better calculated to be appreciated by cultivated minds than by the public, which had in former years granted him so wide a popularity. ”

“ The caricaturist would hardly overlook so extravagant a fashion, and accordingly the manuscript in the British Museum, just mentioned, furnishes us with the subject of our cut No. 69. In those times, when the passions were subjected to no restraint, the fine ladies indulged in such luxury and licentiousness, that the caricaturist has chosen as their fit representative a sow, who wears the objectionable head-dress in full fashion. The original forms one of the illustrations of a copy of the historian Froissart, and was, therefore, executed in France, or, more probably, in Burgundy. ”

“ Depending oftentimes for effect upon overdrawing, nearly always upon a graphic power entirely out of the range of ordinary art, the work of the caricaturist is not to be measured by the ordinary standard of artistic excellence, but rather by the light which it throws upon popular opinion or popular prejudice, in relation to the events, the remembrance of which it perpetuates and chronicles. ”

“ As a matter of fact the work of the leading modern caricaturists is peculiarly free from vulgar offence. The art of caricature as the art of any other form of portraiture is to portray the true leading features through the mirthful marking of the obvious. ”

“ While, however, a latitude is allowed to the caricaturist which would be inconsistent with the principles by which the practice of art is ordinarily governed, it may at the same time be safely laid down that it is essential to the success of the comic designer as well as the caricaturist, that both should be artists of ability, though not necessarily men of absolute genius. ”

“ Whilst claiming for himself the character of a pictorial satirist, the artist is all throughout anxious to impress upon you the fact that he repudiates the notion of being considered a caricaturist in the Johnsonian meaning of the word. ”

“ Spooner.—Comyns Carr.—Pigott.—"Piggy" Palk and "Mr. Spy."
During my long and varied career as a caricaturist, I have watched some of the great men of the century build their careers, and as men are often known, remembered and immortalized—especially abroad—by some idiosyncrasy selected by the capriciousness of time, so I shall always retain of certain characters odd, and even baffling, recollections.
The caricaturist, I am convinced, is born, not made. The facility which comes to some artists after long practice does not necessarily avail in this branch of art ”

“ This I feel bound to do in self-defence, as well as in the cause of truth, for to judge by the biographical sketches of myself which continually appear and reach me through the medium of a press-cutting agency, caricaturists as distorters of features are not so proficient as authors as distorters of facts. ”

“ If our memory does not deceive us, a sketch of the caricaturist's figure, from the life, and drawn in chalks, was exhibited some time ago at Bethnal Green, in the Loan Collection, formed under the auspices of the Science and Art Department. ”

“ In the first place, he is—what no living caricaturist but himself has the least pretensions to be, and what, indeed, scarcely one of their predecessors was—he is a thoroughbred artist.67 He draws with the ease and freedom and fearlessness of a master ”

“ In that case, I say, the caricaturist's work is already done. He has simply to copy Nature. Yet there are some who actually find fault with H. F. for doing that very thing, saying that his pencil (that's me) is 'unkind,' 'cruel,' 'gross,' and so on. There are many M.P.'s whom he habitually draws without the slightest exaggeration, notwithstanding which, Mr. Pen, there are members of your calling who do not scruple to inform the world that in drawing the Parliamentary 'Ha-ha!' as he is, H. F. is libelling him. There is one M.P. in particular—— No, I shall not give his name or show his portrait. ”

“ One frequently hears the remark, "Caricature is so ugly." Well, certainly pure caricature is the villain of art, and the popular draughtsman, like the popular actor, should, to remain popular in his work, always play the virtuous hero. If the leading actor must play the villain, he takes care to make up inoffensive and tame. So the villain caricaturist need not be [Pg 252] "ugly"—but then he cannot be strong. Nor is it left to an actor—unless he be the star or actor-manager—to remain popular by being tame and pretty in every part. ”

“ Just stand like that—yah!—head a little more round. I'll caricature every man jack of you—such guys! Aha! oho! Noses as big as your bodies, and fangs for teeth! Confound you!"
The ground all around him was littered with wild caricature sketches of all sorts of persons—the stable-boy who brought his food, Mr. G——— himself, and his friends and others.
"There, sir," said Mr. G——— "that's what I'm preparing for them: that's the rod I have in pickle! My private caricaturist, sir ”

“ So is the caricaturist, if he is not the star, liable to be cast to play the villain whether he likes it or not, and if he is a genuine worker he will not shrink from the part, merely to remain popular and curry favour with those deserving to be satirised. ”

“ They are full of keen satire and happy invention, and their moral purpose is always good; but all these qualities are compatible with a carelessness of art which is not to be tolerated in any one but a professional caricaturist. ”