What is Cartoon Museum ?

The hand-coloured copper-plate etching, freer in style that the engraving, became fashionable: often priced at 2 shillings (10p) or more it was a luxury item, and beyond the means of most.

The French Revolution in 1789 ignited a fusillade of satirical propaganda in France and Britain.

Both 'Loyalist' members of the Pitt coalition and the opposition 'Reform' Whigs around Fox sponsored partisan political prints.

At first, the Foxites took the upper hand, creating a new type of sophisticated visual and verbal satire.

But news from France of the excesses of the Terror damaged the reform cause.

By 1795 the Foxites were in decline, and a blast of repressive measures, culminating in the Treason and Sedition Acts, subdued not only the press and opposition, but also the print publishers.

In August 1819, the local Yeoman Cavalry attacked a crowd of peaceful protestors in St Peter's Fields, Manchester.

The government response was the repressive Six Acts, including an increase in stamp duty that tripled the price of many papers. The publisher William Hone and George Cruikshank, the foremost caricaturist of the Regency, answered these attacks on Reform with a little 24-page shilling (5p) pamphlet, The Political House That Jack Built.

It would go through 50 editions and sell 100,000 copies.  Hone had revived the technique of wood-engraving.

The hardwood relief block was more durable that the copper-plate, and could be set with the metal type and printed together, thereby cutting costs.

Image and text could now support each other, and reach a wider audience.

The cartoon art form began with 'caricatura'. A caricature - from the Italian caricare, to load or exaggerate - is a drawing that gives weight to the most striking features of its subject for comic effect. The great Italian masters such as Leonardo da Vinci, Annibale Carracci and Gian Lorenzo Benini, all drew caricatures. These were technical exercises in virtuosity with the aim of defining the essence of a person in a few deft strokes of the pen.

The first half of the twentieth century saw the heydey of the popular magazine, and cartoons helped to determine its graphic style and character.

Hogarth created a new form of picture-story, 'comic history-painting' full of 'characters', not 'caricatura', copies of nature, not exaggerations. His 'modern moral subjects', that can be seen in The Harlot's Progress and The Rake's Progress, depict critical moments in life, in act and consequence. Time is represented in space, between and within each scene. It is for this reason that Hogarth is widely regarded as the father of British caricature, in spite of himself, and of the comic strip.

William Heath Robinson joined The Sketch in 1906 and entertained its readers through two world wars.

H.M. Bateman perfected the wordless strip cartoon, and his 'The Man Who...' series of colour cartoons filled the centre-spread of The Tatler in the 1920s and 1930s.

From the 1770s it was the gentleman amateur and semi-amateur, such as Townshend, Bunbury, Woodward and Nixon, who transformed the artform, introducing a more playful style and a strong element of personal caricature. Social satire blossomed, offering humorous observations on current fashions and social pretensions.

In the First World War, cartoonists rallied to the patriotic cause portraying an encounter between the national symbols and personifications.

In the 1780s political satire ripened.  Print-shops flourished in the City, Westminster and St. James's, many holding caricature exhibitions.  The hand-coloured copper-plate etching, freer in style that the engraving, became fashionable: often priced at 2 shillings (10p) or more it was a luxury item, and beyond the means of most.

The French Revolution in 1789 ignited a fusillade of satirical propaganda in France and Britain.  Both 'Loyalist' members of the Pitt coalition and the opposition 'Reform' Whigs around Fox sponsored partisan political prints.  At first, the Foxites took the upper hand, creating a new type of sophisticated visual and verbal satire.  But news from France of the excesses of the Terror damaged the reform cause.  By 1795 the Foxites were in decline, and a blast of repressive measures, culminating in the Treason and Sedition Acts, subdued not only the press and opposition, but also the print publishers.

The morale-boosting works of Bert Thomas and Bruce Bairnsfather proved popular with British troops at the front.

In August 1819, the local Yeoman Cavalry attacked a crowd of peaceful protestors in St Peter's Fields, Manchester. The government response was the repressive Six Acts, including an increase in stamp duty that tripled the price of many papers. The publisher William Hone and George Cruikshank, the foremost caricaturist of the Regency, answered these attacks on Reform with a little 24-page shilling (5p) pamphlet, The Political House That Jack Built.

Victor Weisz, 'Vicky', one of Britain's best post-war political cartoonists, was forced to flee Nazi Germany in 1935.

It would go through 50 editions and sell 100,000 copies. Hone had revived the technique of wood-engraving. The hardwood relief block was more durable that the copper-plate, and could be set with the metal type and printed together, thereby cutting costs. Image and text could now support each other, and reach a wider audience.

When he started at the News Chronicle in 1939 his editor advised a crash course in British culture: he soon had a witty command of a British cartoonist's stock references and motifs, including Shakespeare and Tenniel's Alice drawings.