James Gillray : A Revolution in Satire

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'Tim Clayton’s lavishly illustrated James Gillray: A Revolution in Satire describes not just the caricaturist’s life and tragic end as creeping insanity took hold, but also the bracing effect he had on the art of satire itself.. - Sunday Times

A lavishly illustrated biography of James Gillray, inventor of the art of political caricature

James Gillray (1756-1815) was late Georgian Britain's funniest, most inventive and most celebrated graphic satirist and continues to influence cartoonists today. His exceptional drawing, matched by his flair for clever dialogue and amusing titles, won him unprecedented fame; his sophisticated designs often parodied artists such as William Hogarth, Joshua Reynolds and Henry Fuseli, while he borrowed and wittily redeployed celebrated passages from William Shakespeare and John Milton to send up politicians in an age - as now - where society was fast changing, anxieties abounded, truth was sometimes scarce, and public opinion mattered. Tim Clayton's definitive biography explores Gillray's life and work through his friends, publishers - the most important being women - and collaborators, aiming to identify those involved in inventing satirical prints and the people who bought them.

Clayton thoughtfully explores the tensions between artistic independence, financial necessity and the conflicting demands of patrons and self-appointed censors in a time of political and social turmoil. Distributed for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art.

A Times Art Books of the Year 2022

Details
  • Author: Tim Clayton
  • Hardcover: 408 pages | 205 colour and black and white illustrations
  • Date published: November 2022
  • Language: English
  • ISBN: 9781913107321
  • Product Dimensions: 30.0 x 25.9 cm
Reviews

'the kind of substantial biographical study which would be devoted to a major artist – and rightly, because the works of Gillray are as important as contemporary Georgian portraits or ‘history’ paintings, and much more entertaining (not to mention scurrilous, caustic, scatological, and in the case of several images reproduced here, startlingly pornographic)'- The Spectator

'Tim Clayton’s lavishly illustrated James Gillray: A Revolution in Satire describes not just the caricaturist’s life and tragic end as creeping insanity took hold, but also the bracing effect he had on the art of satire itself.- Sunday Times

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