Praxis de la lógica económica solidaria 39

here, although the most cursory glance through the pages of the late Victorian Punch will make quite clear

the distance between the genuinely caricatural mode of the Golden Age and the restrained realism of

Tenniel, DuMaurier and others. As Michel Jouve has pointed out, K was precisely the exaggeration ot

caricature - Its distance from the academic ideal - which made it so difficult to accept as a ‘legitimate’ art form. As he puts it, caricature, “pierces the screen of appearances and social or aesthetic conventions in

order to reveal the ugliness which Is more or less hidden tjeneath them.” L ’Age D ’O rde !a Caricature

Anglaise, (1983), p. 79. Jouve’s book remains a vital key to understanding the differences (and the links) between academic art and graphic satire. See especially pp.163-84. For a discussion of the role played by illustrated art magazines In shaping the taste cf the Victorian public (and In familiarising them with the conventions of academic painting), see Helene E. Roberts, ‘Exhibition and Review: the Periodical Press and

the Victorian Art Exhibition System’ In Shattock & Wolff eds., The Victorian Periodical P r e s s n o 7Q-

coarseness or exaggeration; and when this fact was accepted, the art of caricaturing underwent a complete iransiiion and assumed a new f o r m .'25

in other words, it was reit tnat caricature - it that term couia still oe applied to wnat oecame, in uoyie s nanos, quite literal representations or tne political rigures or tne oây2 6. suddenly achieved Tespectabilit/ just at the moment when the government

of the nation stood poised to pass from a corrupt, debauched, and self-interested ruling elite to an increasingly poiiticaily-conscious, literate and - more importantly - productive middle or lower-middie class, a s tne oaiance or power shifted, so too

did tne manner in wnicn it snouid oe represented - so ran tne argument, temperance, restraint, responsioiiity ana realism wouid oecome tne norm, rainer than debauchery, scatology, libel and exaggeration. Unfortunately, this formulation reduced the entirety of 1b3ùs graphic satire to the work of Doyie aione. And Doyle, it was emphasised, “VVhiist claiming for himself the character of a pictorial satirist... (was) all throughout anxious to impress upon you that he repudiate(ed) the notion of being considered a caricaturist in the Johnsonian meaning of the w o r d .”27 The

work of other artists, however, is passed over - especially that which was more directly representative of contemporary radical culture.

Doyle was the first nineteenth-century visual satirist to deliberately divorce the caricatural mode from graphic satire, and to introduce a very conscious element of academic classicism Into his figurai compositions (fig . 10) 28 His Political

Sketches (beginning in 1828) were undoubtedly the epitome of respectable' and

responsible political commentary and, although deeply unfashionable today, his influence was felt throughout the nineteenth century, long after he himself was largely forgotten. And yet his was by no means the only mode of satirical imagery which emerged In the 1830s. The fact that it is often remembered as such is largely because it was a product of the dominant culture of the period. It was preserved and celebrated In the middle class press from the outset {The Times in

25 Everitt, op.cit., pp. 4-5. For a more reasoned discussion of the Georgian tradition of caricature, see Robert

L. Patten, ‘Conventions of Georgian Caricature' in The Art Journal, Voi.43 (1983), pp.331-38.

26 As Ernst Kris and Ernst Gombrich have pointed out, "the caricaturist... does not seek the perfect formtnA

the perfect deformity, thus penetrating through the mere outward appearance to ttie inner tieing in ail its

littleness or ugliness." See ‘Principles of Caricature’ in The British Journal of Medical Psychology, No.17

(1938), pp.319-42 (p.322). With Doyle, however, it is an-outward appearance'. 27 ibid., p.240.

28 For a useful overview of Doyle’s work, see G.M. Trevelyan, The Seven Years of \Mlliam IV; A Reign

particular devoting extensive space to describing each new batch of HB’s prints),

so its history was documented from a very early stage.29

This holds true even more so for the history of Punch and its contributors. The men who produced it were celebrities in their own right, enormously active in the social and cultural life of the metropolis (and, by extension, of the nation). Their biographies were written, and their reputations cemented, by their peers, who included such luminaries as Frith, Millais, Ruskin, John Martin, and Marion Spielmann, the last of whom, as editor of The Magazine of Art, was instrumental in establishing the perception of Punch as a national institution - a role he amply fulfilled with his monumental History of Punch in 1895.30 The Strand Magazine

hailed Tenniel as “the greatest cartoonist the world has ever produced” and Charles Keene as “the greatest artisf ever to work for Punch^^ (a compliment which placed him above even Millais, who had contributed two designs to the journal in the 1 8 6 0s).32 Ruskin was even more effusive in his praise for Tenniel,

who he claimed, “has much of the largeness and symbolic mastery of the imagination which belongs to the great leaders of classic art: in the shadowy masses and sweeping lines of his great compositions, there are tendencies which might have won his adoption into the school of Tintoret.”33

However, work which existed (and defined itself) in opposition to the mode inaugurated by Doyle - aesthetically, formally and ideologically - was destined for a very different fate. The stylistic ‘crudeness’, density of text, and overtly anti­ authoritarian stance which characterised the products of lower-class radical satire in particular (fig .5) meant that they could not hope to achieve the same level of cultural status as their middle class contemporaries (and almost certainly had no desire to do so). This work was simply too ‘ugly’ - too abrasive - for the middle class sensibility. For commentators such Thackeray, writing in the 1830s, these

29 BMC, Vol.XI, p.xivi

30 Marion Spielmann, The History of Punch (1895)

31 J.Holt Schooling, ‘A Peep into Punch’ in The Strand Magazine, No.17 (1899), p. 182 and no. 18 (1899), p.376

32 See Punch, Vol. xliv (1863), p.115 and his design for F.C. Burnand’s ‘Mokeanna’ in the 1865 Almanack.

33 John Ruskin, The Art of England, 2nd ed. (1887), p. 195. Ruskin’s praise tor Punch and Its artists was

reciprocated by the magazine, which devoted considerable space to his achievements In the late nirwteenth

century. See Brian Maidment, ‘Ruskin and Punch” inVPN Vol. XII, No.1, Spring 1979. Tastes have

changed since Ruskin’s time, however. As Tennlel’s most recent biographer asked, “How could an artist capable of the vigour and Inventiveness displayed in the illustrations to the Alice books also be responsible for reducing the vibrant tradition of Hogarth and Gillray to a cold, righteous Imperial Iconography?” Roger

images were nothing more than “rude caricatures”, suitable only for the semi­ literate lower classes.34 Similarly, a moderate radical such as Francis Place was moved to voice his concern about the aggressive tone of C. J. Grant’s illustrations for John Cleave’s pro-Chartist broadsheet. The London Satirist, feeling that they lent the journal an air of disreputability which might be damaging to the movement’s cause ( f ig .6) 35 There was no-one to write the history of this material, nor that of the artists and wood engravers who produced it. A pioneer such as Charles Hindley, who collected and documented the publications of James Catnach (the notorious ballad seller of Seven Dials), was exceptional at the time, and must have appeared somewhat eccentric in his tastes, which, alas, did not extend to radical satirical prints, despite their occasional aesthetic and material similartties.36

Even the biographies of the more prominent graphic satirists of the 1830s - in the years before the social clique of the Punch table was established - are lost to us.

All we are left with are tantalising fragments and vague conjecture: C.J. Grant once lived near Gray’s Inn Road; William Heath may have been a captain in the Dragoon Guards; Henry Heath may have been William’s brother; ‘Sharpshooter’

mayhave been John Phillips; J. L. Marks was bribed by the Prince Regent to stop producing offensive prints; and so on.37 Of Robert Seymour we know a little more, although even his life is generally referred to only in relation to his suicide in 1836.38 Of all the artists active in the 1830s, only George Cruikshank’s history has been traced in any detail.39