The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1869-10-16

comic contemporaries (the IOmdhdIob and
VdBaty Fdj1) have distinguished themselves
by their colored cartoons; bat it is not alone
the color which makes difference between
these designs and those of Punch. They be-
long to distinct school, the most prominent
feature of which is a kind of phantasmagoric
extravaganza The.pictures in both the peri
odicals to which we allude are very clever. but
they are not agreeable. The coloring is often
lurid, and the compositions are frequently
pervaded by grimness of conception and
wild grotesqueness of detail that are anything
but laughter-moving.
The prevalence of this species of art in
periodicals specially designed for light enter
tainment is another fact proving the decay of
genial humor which we lamented some time
back. If we refer to the earlier volumes of
PuRch, the colored designs of the JomHb0l0b
and Idnity FAR seem in the comparison
like episodes in Holbein's ''Dance of Death. )"
We are getting saturnine and savage in our
playful moods, and strike as hard with the
crayon as with a stiletto.
This is the more to be regretted because
caricature has long been popular with the
English people, and is likely to continue so,
and we are sorry to see it perverted from its
original and genuine purpose of giving amuse-
ment by droll presentation of persons and
things, and satirising the follies of the day
with tartness, yet without malevolence.
Glance over the caricatures copied in hIr.
Thomas Wrights ''Caricature History of the
Georges, and it will be seen that moodiness
was at no time one of the characteristics of
the art, though the manner of the art has
varied greatly from age to age. Grotesque
pictorial satires on men and manners were
familiar to our ancestors even in the middle
ages, and they were very popular in the time
of the Commonwealth. At the later period
they were generally produced in Holland, and
it was not until the epoch of the South Sea
bubble that we had any native artists Of this
description.
One of the earliest was also one of the
greatest-Hogarth. That memorable humor-
list first became famous as a designer of carl
catures, and it was the rage for the bubble
companies which called forth his powers. The
style of Hogarth was very different from that
of some of our modern draughtsmen. That
he struck hard we all know; that he had great
tragic power is also very certain; but he had
plenty of hearty, enjoyable humor as we'll
So with those who followed him. The men
who satirised Sir Robert Walpole, Boiling
broke, Pulteney, Butte, Chatham, Wilkes, and
the other prominent politicians of the earlier
Georgian era, were artists in whom humor
and good humor were alike conspicuous; at
any rate such were the prevailing character
istics of their works, though they may occa-
sionally have been guilty of little coarse
personality.
1t is remarkable, too, how much ingenuity,
invention, and witty application there is in
these old caricatTIres Many would do no
discredit to the comic press of the present
day, and some are in the highest degree excel
lent. In the reign of George ILL., race of
caricaturists arose, some Of whom acquired a
reputation which lasts, and will continue to
last. Gillray, Rowlandson, and Sayer-es-
,Naniollry tho tNrp tfCt-- rraof
to us, and their works command high price
The main subjects of their pencils we're the
younger Pitt and Burke, Sheridan, Shelburne,
North, Dundas, Warren Hastings, Grattan,
Horne Tooke, DIR. Price, the Prince Regent
and his feminine favorites, and not unfre-
quently the King and Queen themselves
These three eminent artists, in fact, represent
the middle Georgian era, the ten years of
George Tvs reign being commemorated by
another set of men.
With Gillray more elaborate style Of art
came in than had prevailed in the times of
the two first Georges (always excepting the
great works of Hogarth), but the manner, or
the spirit, was coarser. STILL these produc-
tons had not the gloomy character of the
colored cartoons of to-day, and they were dis
tinguished by much witty and humorous con-
ception. Perhaps the worst thing that can be
said against them is that they encouraged to
ridiculous extent the anti -Gallican feelings of
the English people during the war with Bona
parte, supported the extravagant and abso-
lutist policy of the Government, and devel-
oped to the most mOnstrous proportions the
national spirit of brag. Under these inhu-
ences the comic art of the latter years of
George III became vulgarized and impover-
ished; yet, considering the circumstances Of
the time, a different course was hardly to be
anticipated.
A very different feeling however, was ex-
pressed by some of the younger men Of the
regency; and one in particular, who is still
living and working among us, and whose face
strikes our eyes in the Photographic windows
with look OF vigorous shrewdness that seems
to defy time and change, bent all his powers
| between fifty and sixty years ago to the re-
form of political and social abuses Wealluds.
of course, to George Cruikshank. Nomodera
man has caught so much of the genius Of
! Hogarth, both in its comic and its tragic ele-
ments, as this gifted designer and to what
! he may have remotely derived from his great
predecessor he has added many qualities of
his own. The gallery of his own
productions, which he opened at
Exeter Hall about six years ago, bore
wonderful testimony to the fecundity
of his genius, the variety of his powers, and
the industry of his life. He must always be
remembered as one of the leading popular
artists of the nineteenth century; and when
we look at the morbid cleveIness of some of
our rising artists, we long for little Of the
healthy joIlity Of Ccuikshank's best days, ere
he was given up to the illustration of dreary
moral platitudes as to the unadvisabilitv of
consuming your liver with gin, or numbering
your wife with a bottle. Leech was another
humOrist of the most delightful kind; SO is
Mr. Tenniel, when he likes it; and so is Mr..