Lecture: The Fantastic Visions of James Gillray, June 2019

Fairfax House’s Savage Satire exhibition will conclude with a lecture by Tim Clayton entitled The Fantastic Visions of James Gillray. Readers of this blog will no doubt be familiar with Clayton’s work on English prints and printmaking during the long eighteenth-century, which includes a number of books on the subject of caricatures. He is currently a new study of Gillray and the business of satire, which will no doubt form the basis of his presentation.

The lecture will begin at 7pm on 6th June at Fairfax House in York. Admission to a post-lecture wine reception is included within the price of the ticket. Further details can be found HERE.

Savage Satire – An Exhibition of the Works of James Gillray

Fairfax House in York is currently hosting a James Gillray exhibition entitled Savage Satire. The exhibition features 35 original prints by Gillray, including a number of his most important and iconic works, as well as one of his original engraved copper plates. Savage Satire runs until 7th June 2019 and admission is included in the price on entry to Fairfax House.

Further details, some of which are reproduced below, can be found on the Fairfax House website. I’ll be going and I hope to see you there.

Savage Satire – From the pen of James Gillray

James Gillray, savage satirist, cruel cartoonist and biting political commentator, wielded a power with his pen that few could match in Georgian Britain. His grotesquely exaggerated and wicked caricatures mercilessly ridiculed and poured scorn on politicians, celebrities and royalty alike.

The visceral and subversive nature of Gillray’s Georgian humour knew no bounds. From the underbelly of British life and the cut-throat business of politics, through to nationalistic squabbles with European neighbours and intensifying notions of ‘Britishness’, all offered a rich seam for Gillray to prod and poke fun at. At the height of his creative powers in the 1790s Gillray’s pen turned out an incessant medley of acidic attacks on everything from insidious tax increases, failed trade missions and constitutional reform, through to the terrors of the French Revolution, war and the threat of imminent invasion.

200 years on, his often ruthless, sometimes gruesome, but always sharp and sophisticated satires have never been more amusing or relevant.

Drawing on an extraordinary collection of Gillray’s works, a life-time creation by collector Donald Coverdale, Savage Satire draws many parallels between Gillray’s world and today’s current affairs.

Robert Seymour’s ‘Looking Glass’ at the Huntington Library

The Huntington possesses a trove of images from the golden age of British caricature—most notably by artists Thomas Rowlandson (1756–1827) and Isaac Cruikshank (1764–1811). It also owns some gems by Robert Seymour (1798–1836), an illustrator whose fame grew around the time of Rowlandson’s death. Today, Seymour is probably best known as the illustrator of the […] […]

via Ian Haywood on Robert Seymour’s ‘The Looking Glass’ at the Huntington Library — Romantic Illustration Network

An Invitation…

The Romantic Illustrations Network will be holding an inaugural network event at the British Academy in London on the 6th June 2014. The event will consist of the following:

1.30pm: Welcome: Susan Matthews (Roehampton)/ Tate
1.40pm: William St Clair (London IES) ‘Towards a Political Economy of Book Illustration’
2.30pm: Brian Maidment (Liverpool John Moores) ‘Comic Illustration in the Marketplace 1820-1840’
3.20pm: Tea/coffee break
3.40pm: Workshop, ‘Digital Humanities and Romantic Illustration’ – Run by Anthony Mandal, Julia Thomas, and Michael Goodman (Cardiff) digitising visual artefacts – working with large image corpora – illustrations and the digital archive
5.00pm: Open Discussion

Entrance is free and everyone is welcome to attend. Space is limited though so make sure you complete the proforma saved here and return it to Dr Mary Shannon at the University of Roehampton (mary.shannon@roehampton.ac.uk) as soon as possible. A copy of the programme is available here.

I’ll be popping along too, so please say hello if you happen to bump into me in the queue for the tea trolley. See you there.