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A caricature is a portrait, painting or cartoon that exaggerates or distorts certain features of a person or item to generate an easily identifiable visual likeness.

Caricatures can be insulting or complimentary and can serve a political purpose or be drawn simply for entertainment. Caricatures of politicians are frequently used in editorial cartoons, whereas caricatures of movie stars are frequently seen in entertainment magazines.

The term is derived from the Italian caricare- to charge or load. So, the word “caricature” essentially says a “loaded portrait”. Strictly speaking , the term refers only to depictions of real-life people, and not to cartoon fabrications of fictional characters.

However the world-renowned animator Walt Disney claimed that his animation work could be compared with caricature, saying the hardest thing to do was find the caricature of an animal that worked best as a human-like character.

One of the earliest instances of a caricature has been discovered in the ruins of Pompeii where a graffiti caricature of a politician had been carved on a wall.

Moving forward nearly 1500 years but staying in Italy, Leonardo da Vinci was an active proponent of the art. He actually sought out people with some form of deformity to use as models.

The point of a caricature was to offer an impression of the original which was more striking than a portrait. Diodemmar Casem, one of the great early exponents, claimed to be able to sum up a person in ? three or four strokes of the pen?.

Caricature experienced its first successes in the closed aristocratic circles of France and Italy, where such portraits would be passed about for mutual satisfaction.

Mary Darley was one of the first professional caricaturists in England and around 1762 published the first book of caricature drawing in England – A Book of Caricaturas

However, the two greatest exponents of the art of the caricature in the 18th century were Thomas Rowlandson and James Gillray. Their styles of output were in great contrast. Rowlandson was the more artistic of the two and took his inspiration from the public at large.

Gillray, on the other hand, was more interested in the political scene and used his art to lampoon political life. Being contemporaries they became great friends and used to spend a great deal of time getting drunk in the taverns of London.

In drawing a caricature the caricaturist can select to either gently mock or cruelly wound his subject. Drawing caricatures can merely be a variety of entertainment and amusement – in which case gentle mockery is in order – or the art can be employed to make a significant social or political point.

A caricaturist draws on (1) the natural characteristics of the subject (the big ears, long nose, etc.); (2) the acquired individuality (stoop, scars, facial lines etc.); and (3) the vanities (choice of hair style, glasses, clothes, expressions and mannerisms).

Although caricaturists like Gillray raised a great deal of controversy in the 18th century by their portrayal of the Royal family and especially George III, it was nothing compared to the present day pandemonium in the Muslim world brought about by cartoons caricaturing the prophet Mohammed. So the contemporary day caricaturist continues in the satirical mode of his illustrious predecessors.

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This list includes both British born artists and those who were born elsewhere but did the majority of their most important creations in the U.K. The assortment is listed in chronological order by date of birth.

Max Beerbohm ( 1872 ? 1956 )

Sir Henry Maximilian “Max” Beerbohm was born in London, son of a well-to-do Lithuanian-born grain merchant. His family gave him he nick-name of Max and that is what he signed himself in his work and was called for the rest of his life.

Beerbohm was educated at Charterhouse School and Merton College, Oxford but finished without taking a degree as he was already well recognized as a caricaturist and humourist.

He had an incapacity to draw hands and feet but excelled at heads and his dandified figures with inflated heads quickly became his trade-mark. The Times newspaper in 1913 described him as ?the greatest of English comic artists and he was variously hailed as ?the English Goya? and “the greatest portrayer of personalities in the history of art?

Henry Bateman (1887 – 1970)

Bateman was born in New South Wales, Australia of English parents who came back to England soon after he was born. He studied art at Westminster School of Art and the Goldsmith Institute.

His style matured early in life and by the age of 17 it was already established. He achieved a contract with Tatler magazine but is best well-known for his ?The Man Who??.? series of cartoons. These showed hapless people who had committed mostly upper class social faux pas. ?The Man Who lit his Cigar before the Loyal Toast? is a prime instance.

Sir David Low (1891 ? 1963)

Sir David Alexander Cecil Low was born in New Zealand and educated in Dunedin and Christchurch. He started his professional life in New Zealand and in fact his first work was published when he was merely 11 years of age.

He later moved to Australia and next to England and by 1927 was working for The Evening Standard. He is best well-known for his work depicting Hitler and Mussolini both before and during World War II. In fact, generations of New Zealand school children studied about the beginning of the Second World War using textbooks illustrated by Low.

He was particularly hated by Hitler and after the war it was uncovered that his name was in the ?Black Book? which listed those who the Nazis wanted to arrest after they had occupied Britain.

Low was knighted in 1962, a year before his death. His obituary described him as “the leading cartoonist of the western world”

Ronald Searle (b. 1920)

Ronald William Fordham Searle was born in Cambridge and began drawing at the surprisingly early age of five and was working for remuneration by the age of 15. The War interrupted his art studies and he joined up with the Royal Engineers .

He was serving in Singapore when he was captured by the Japanese. He was a prisoner of war for the rest of the war eventually working on the notorious Siam-Burma ?Death Railway?. He created, in secret, many drawings depicting conditions in the camps which survived detection by being hidden under the mattresses of dying prisoners.

He returned to England at the end of the war and produced a prodigious volume of work in the 1950?s and 60?s. However he is best known as the originator of ?St Trinians School?.

Gerald Scarfe (b. 1936)

Gerald Anthony Scarfe was born in London and as a child was severely asthmatic. During his early bed-ridden years he busied himself by drawing. He began his working life in advertising but by the early 60?s his caricatures were appearing in ?Private Eye? and this led to a job with the ?Daily Mail?.

But it was his work with the British rock group Pink Floyd for which he is most known especially the illustration for the cover of their 1979 album ?The Wall?.

Searle also provided the caricatures for the opening and closing sequences of the well-liked BBC comedy ?Yes Minister? and in 1998 he drew caricatures of Tommy Cooper, Eric Morecombe, Joyce Grenfell, Les Dawson and Peter Cook which were shown on a set of five British postage stamps celebrating British comedians.

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This list includes both British born artists and those who were born elsewhere but did the majority of their most important work in the U.K. The assortment is listed in chronological order by date of birth.

William Hogarth (1697 – 1764)

He was born in London and apprenticed to an engraver where he studied his trade. He became a painter, printmaker, pictorial satirist, social critic and editorial cartoonist and has been accredited with pioneering sequential art or the cartoon strip.

His output ranged from realistic portraiture to comic strip-like series of pictures known as “contemporary moral topics”. His most famous works are no doubt ? The Harlot?s Progress and ?The Rake?s Progress?.

Isaac Cruickshank ( 1756 ? 1811)

Cruickshank was a Scottish painter and caricaturist who was born in Edinburgh. Cruikshank’s first known publications were etchings of Edinburgh “types”, from 1784.

His water colours were exhibited, but in order to make a living it was found that it was more profitable to produce prints and caricatures. He was responsible in part for creating the figure of John Bull, the nationalistic representation of a solid British yeoman.

Isaac Cruikshank was a contemporary of James Gillray and Thomas Rowlandson, and he was part of what has been known as “the Golden Age of British Caricature.

Thomas Rowlandson ( 1756 – 1827)

Thomas Rowlandson was an English painter and caricaturist. He was born in London and after he finished school he was educated at the Royal Academy. He was thought of as a promising student and if he had sustained his early diligence he would have made his mark as a painter.

But he inherited ?7,000 from a French aunt and plunged into the dissipations of the town (he was known to sit at the gambling-table for 36 hours at a stretch).

He quickly squandered his inheritance but the friendship and examples of James Gillray and Henry William Bunbury seem to have recommended caricature as a means of filling his stomach and purse.

He also created a collection of erotic prints and woodcuts, lots of which would these days be thought of as pornographic .

James Gillray (1757 ? 1815)

James Gillray was a British caricaturist and printmaker who gained great fame for his etched political and social satires, mainly in print between 1792 and 1810.

Some of his most well known caricatures were aimed at at the Royal Family and George III in particular. He is also responsible for almost certainly the most famous political cartoon of all time.

It was entitled ?The Plum Pudding in Danger? . It was published in 1805 and shows Pitt and Napoleon carving up the plum pudding of Europe.

By 1811, madness, no doubt made worse by his excessive life-style, was overtaking him and he passed away in 1815.

George Cruickshank ( 1792 ? 1878)

George Cruickshank was born in London, the son of the famous caricaturist Isaac Cruickshank and began his working career as apprentice to his father.

He later started out as a caricaturist in his own right and was even paid ?100 in return for a promise not to caricature George IV In later life he switched to book illustrating and illustrated ?Sketches by Boz? and ?Oliver Twist? for Charles Dickens.

After developing palsy he died in 1878. Punch in his obituary said ?There never was a purer, simpler, more straightforward or altogether more blameless man. His nature had something childlike in its transparency.”

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In all probability the first name that springs to mind when thinking of the history of cartoons is that of Punch.

It was a British weekly periodical of humour and satire published between 1841 and 1992. It was started in July 1841 by Henry Mayhew who, with Mark Lemon, was accountable for the editing, and engraver Ebenezer Landells who looked after the illustrations.

Its initial sub-title was The London Charivari, after a French satirical humour publication called Le Charivari. Reflecting their satiric and humorous goal, the two editors took the name of the anarchic glove puppet, Mr. Punch, of Punch and Judy renown as the title of the new periodical.

However the name is also a play on words regarding the name of the co-editor Mark Lemon, in that “punch is nothing without lemon”. Mayhew did not stick with the magazine for long. He ceased being joint editor in 1842 and became “suggestor in chief” until he left in 1845.

Punch was responsible for the word “cartoon” in the sense of a comic drawing. In fact one of its most famous cartoons, drawn by George Du Maurier, the grandfather of the novelist Dame Daphne Du Maurier , gave birth to the expression ?it is good in parts, like the curate?s egg?. The phrase derives from a cartoon entitled “True Humility”.

It pictured a nervous-looking curate taking breakfast in his bishop’s house.The bishop says, “I’m afraid you’ve got a bad egg, Mr Jones.” The curate replies, “Oh, no, my Lord, I assure you that parts of it are excellent!”

Yet probably its most well-known cartoon is entitled ? Dropping the Pilot? . This was a political cartoon by Sir John Tenniel, first published in March 1890. It depicts the German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, as a shipping pilot, stepping off a ship watched by the German Emperor Wilhelm II. Bismarck had recently resigned as Chancellor at Wilhelm’s insistence.

After a very problematic start with much financial trouble and lack of market success, Punch became a necessity for British middle class drawing rooms because it not just displayed a sophisticated sense of humour and but lacked the rude material so prevalent in much of the alternative satirical press of the time.

The Times utilized small parts from Punch as column fillers, giving the magazine free publicity and indirectly granting a degree of respectability, However respectability was truly achieved when it was learned that Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were to be found amongst it readership.

The circulation of Punch peaked during the 1940s at 175,000 but thereafter fell into decline, until in 1992 ,after 150 years the magazine was forced to close.

In 1996, the Egyptian businessman Mohamed Al-Fayed became tired of the numerous criticisms he had to put up with from the publication Private Eye and bought the rights to the Punch name with a view to using it to combat his adversary. He relaunched it later that year, but it never achieved any degree of circulation or profitability and in May 2002 it was declared that Punch would at long last close for good

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