James Gillray

I’m not a huge fan of Christmas, but I am impressed by the impact of a well-chosen Christmas present. This year, on the strength of a rave review in the LRB, my son bought me a copy of “James Gillray”, a massive, expensive study of the eighteenth century caricaturist. It was too heavy to comfortably manipulate on my lap, so I ended up reading it at the dining room table, for a quarter of an hour each day.

And what a treat that was. The drawings are amazingly intricate, and fantastically energetic. The text carefully explains which particular politician is the target and why, and the illustrations are brilliant, often producing two copies of the same picture at different scales, so we can grasp both the specific detail and the overall design.

There is, too, a complex political and technical background, whereby different people may contribute to a particular cartoon - original idea, drawing, engraving, publication, promotional campaign. Sometimes Gillray was personally involved, but sometimes he wasn’t - serving whichever power group was willing to pay for his services. His work inspires modern artists like Martin Rowson and Steve Bell, but it’s astonishing to grasp that many of these masterpieces were never drawn at all - but inscribed immediately, in reverse, onto metal platyes. Just astonishing.