By the time James Gillray began his prolific career as a caricaturist, European interest in the ‘science’ of physiognomy was being reawakened and popularized by Enlightenment scholars, most significantly through the writings of Johann Caspar Lavater. Lavater attempted to decipher the universal language of facial expression and outer appearance to understand and categorize the hidden character traits of humans. A caricaturist by definition will purposely exaggerate and distorting the human form for a desired effect, and therefore Gillray would naturally be drawn to this language of human expression in his satirical cartoons. This essay however, will investigate the level of significance physiognomic thought had on the way he depicted those he satirized. The politically tumultuous late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century left Gillray with a multitude of potential subjects to lambast, however, due to his extensive portfolio of drawings, this essay will focus on two sets of recurring caricatures. Firstly cartoons featuring personifications of the British and French nations will be looked at in relation to ideas of national physiognomy as well as the established cultural caricatures of these nations. Additionally I will look at two of Gillray’s most featured subjects, King George III and Napoleon Bonaparte, which allows comparison of their different caricatures in addition to their ‘actual likeness’, seen in other portraits of the rulers.
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Overall I hope to qualify to what extent Gillray utilized physiognomy in his caricatures to attack and comment on his contemporary
Overall I hope to qualify to what extent Gillray utilized physiognomy in his caricatures to attack and comment on his contemporary