In Folio: Rare Volumes in the Stanford University Libraries

James Gillray, 1756-1815.
The Works of James Gillray, from the Original Plates ….
London: Printed for Henry G. Bohn, 1847.

James Gillray was the most famous caricaturist of his day. An accomplished engraver, he was influenced by the satirical prints of William Hogarth (1697-1764). Gillray lived in a rich age for caricature, with European events and British political and royal personalities serving as fine sources for lampoon and satire. His caricatures consistently show a keen eye for detail, a savage wit, and a wide knowledge of contemporary society. Gillray was no admirer of the French Revolution; the French and Napoleon Bonaparte were constant targets. King George III, the Prince of Wales (the future George IV), and the leading politicians of the day (both Whig and Tory) during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century likewise came under Gillray’s trenchant scrutiny. This collection of Gillray’s prints includes the 582 prints that comprise the “political” and the “social” series, as well as the forty-five “suppressed” plates, caricatures especially risqué, bawdy, or scatological and often not found in collections of Gillray’s work.

The caricature shown here is one of the least offensive from the "suppressed" series, and shows an inebriated Paul François Jean Nicolas Barras (1755-1829), a member of the French Directory and known for his immorality in both public and private life, sitting at the left. He has offered Napoleon two women to look at, Madame Tallien and Josephine de Beauharnais. The latter was then Barras’ mistress, but Barras had tired of her; he is offering a reward should Napoleon take Josephine from Barras, who wants as his new mistress Madame Tallien. Madame Tallien is portrayed as the more elegant of the two women, but Bonaparte is seen as eagerly accepting the less attractive woman to advance his political career. Josephine de Beauharnais was a widow who had been the mistress of more than one French leader, and her dalliances would continue even after she wed Napoleon in 1796. Desperate for an heir and still childless, Napoleon eventually divorced her in 1809; Josephine as libertine was another obvious target for Gillray.

Gillray was known in his life for his intemperate habits, and there were rumors of the most unpleasant sort about his relationship with his publisher and printseller, Mrs. Humphrey, in whose house Gillray lived for years. These rumors, probably unfounded after all, were described by a Gillray biographer of delicate Victorian feeling, to the effect that "there was a liaison between Gillray and Mrs. Humphrey not essential to their relationship as designer and publisher."

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