turing into the
arena of politics. During the latter half of the century, however,
political caricature began to be somewhat more skilfully handled than of
old by James Sayer, a satirist in the pay of the younger Pitt, while
social grotesques were pleasantly treated by Henry William Bunbury
(1750-1811) and George Moutard Woodward. These personalities, however,
interesting as they are, are dwarfed into insignificance by the great
figure of James Gillray (1757-1815), in whose hands political caricature
became almost epic for grandeur of conception and far-reaching
suggestiveness. It is to the works of this man of genius, indeed, and
(in a less degree) to those of his contemporary, Thomas Rowlandson
(1756-1827), an artist of great and varied powers, that historians must
turn for the popular reflection of all the political notabilia of the
end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th centuries. England may be
said to have been the chosen home of caricature during this period. In
France, timid and futile under the Monarchy, it had assumed an immense
importance under the Revolution, and a cloud of hideous pictorial libels
was the result; but even the Revolution left no such notes through its
own artists, though Fragonard (1732-1806) himself was of the number, as
came from the gravers of Gillray and Rowlandson. In Germany caricature
did not exist. Only in Spain was there to be found an artist capable of
entering into competition with the masters of the satirical grotesque of
whom England could boast. The works of Francesco Goya y Lucientes
(1746-1828) are described by Theophile Gautier as "a mixture of those of
Rembrandt, Watteau, and the comical dreams of Rabelais," and
Champfleury discovers analogies between him and Honore Daumier, the
greatest caricaturist of modern France.

The satirical grotesque of the 18th century had been characterized by a
sort of grandiose brutality, by a certain vigorous obscenity, by a
violence of expression and intention, that appear monstrous in these
days of reserve and restraint, but that doubtless sorted well enough
with the strong party feelings and fierce political passions of the age.
After the downfall of Napoleon (1815), however, when strife was over and
men were weary and satisfied, a change in matter and manner came over
the caricature of the period. In connection with this change, the name
of George Cruikshank (1792-1878), an artist who stretches hands on the
one side towards Hogarth