Masters of Caricature: Thomas Rowlandson

Thomas Rowlandson (1757-1827) was a prolific English caricaturist of the Georgian Age. His cartoons and prints encompassed politics, personality, social life, medicine, death, and other topics both contemporary and timeless. He produced large numbers of illustrations for books, both fiction and non-fiction. 

Many of Rowlandson's published works are bawdy and erotic, certainly by later Victorian standards. His unpublished works included more explicit erotica, which he created for private individuals. 

"The Courtesan" is an example of the milder erotica. An elderly "customer" leers lustily at the young woman, the Georgian equivalent of the modern escort.

A more explicit drawing is "Ladies Trading on their Own Bottom" (1810). Here, an elderly Jewish man seated between two prostitutes is giving them bags marked 100, clearly payment for services rendered.  

In the 1780s Rowlandson became friends with another master caricaturist, James Gillray. Gillray's success producing satirical prints encouraged Rowlandson to try his hand at it. Together, he and Gillray helped to make the pugnacious John Bull a personification of Britain and British resistance to the French and Napoleon. 

One of Rowlandson's forays into political caricature was a series he did on the electoral campaigning of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire. The story is related in the 2008 film The Duchess, starring Keira Knightley, and by yours truly elsewhere. 

The Duchess' political activities aroused a scandal. Rowlandson took full advantage of the situation, portraying her mingling with and even kissing men from the lower orders. The cartoons implied that she was acting much like a common woman of the streets. [See Scandal: Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, and the British Election of 1784] 

Rowlandson seems to have been a bit obsessed with the Duchess. Despite the implied criticism in his electoral cartoons, I think he may have had a secret crush on her. His depictions of her were not always political. An example is a watercolor, "A Gaming Table at Devonshire House" (1787).

Devonshire House was the London residence of Georgiana and her husband the duke, where they (or she) threw many lavish parties. Here, Rowlandson pictures the Duchess in a hat throwing the dice during a game of faro. Her sister, also hatted, is reaching into her purse for more money. One of the young men at the table is the Prince of Wales, the future George IV, who famously gambled away a fortune. 

The painting is dripping with sensuality. Rowlandson may have been criticizing Georgiana's fondness for gambling but he was an avid and often successful gambler himself. He certainly captures her famous beauty here. 

Rowlandson was equally fascinated with the more grisly business of anatomy and one of its offshoots, body snatching. He produced a number of prints showing anatomists and their pupils dissecting corpses. on the right, the man in the brown coat is looking at a price list for bodies. [Image: "The Dissecting Room"]

In "The Persevering Surgeon" Rowlandson adds a touch of eroticism. The surgeon is about to dissect the body of a young woman, and seems to be leering lustily at her breasts. 

Rowlandson also portrayed the business of securing the "subjects" of dissection. Body snatching, as it was known, involved stealing freshly dead bodies. It was an illegal, but highly profitable trade. 

Obtaining enough bodies legally, even for teaching purposes, was difficult. The growth of anatomy schools in the late 18th century increased the demand for them far beyond the legal supply. 

Anatomists and their pupils often hunted for subjects. Starting in the late 18th century, professional gangs of "Sack Em Up Men," also known as "Resurrection Men," helped to supply the deficiency. They obtained the goods from cemeteries, dead houses, and hospital morgues. In some infamous cases they murdered people to sell their bodies. 

Rowlandson portrayed their nocturnal work in prints such as "The Resurrection Men." 

You may have noticed the presence of skeletons in the previous images. They obviously represent Death, the nemesis of us all, and the great equalizer. They appear in many of Rowlandson's prints. an example is "Death in the Dissecting Room." Here, Avenging Death makes a sudden appearance, terrorizing the anatomists and the body snatcher hauling in a fresh subject. 

Rowlandson's interest in the grisly and macabre is also seen in his drawing of men hanging from a gibbet along the Thames. 

 

In 1814, a friend of Rowlandson's, George Henry Harlow, produced this portrait of him. He was then in his late 50s and at the peak of his career. He died in 1827. 

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