Portrait of James Gillray, Caricaturist

This mezzotint or stipple-engraving presents Gillray (1756–1815) in oval bust format — the standard dignified convention used for men of letters — wearing a double-breasted coat and frilled cravat, his expression composed and shrewdly attentive. The irony is deliberate: the same oval format that honored statesmen here honors the man who savaged them. Gillray is the central figure in the genealogy running from Hogarth's moral engravings through Rowlandson and Daumier to Thomas Nast and the newspaper comic strip. His hand-colored etchings fixed the visual grammar of political caricature — grotesque physiognomy, symbolic props, crowded symbolic space — that cartoonists would compress into the sequential panel. Published four years after his death, this portrait argues, quietly, that printmaking satire deserved a place in the portrait tradition it had spent decades puncturing.