Phrenological Propensities, 1826

George Cruikshank arranges five vignettes around a chaotic central scene of a large family crammed around a dinner table — his send-up of philoprogenitiveness, the phrenological faculty for parental love. Surrounding panels skewer related 'bumps': an apothecary pawing his maidservant (amativeness), a preening dandy at his mirror (self-love), the exhibited skeleton-man Claude Ambroise Seurat reduced to a walking medical curiosity (individuality), and Toby the Learned Pig counting beneath a fairground sign (number). Seurat's depiction reflects the period's unabashed commercial exploitation of physical difference as public spectacle. The coloured etching — fine crosshatching, hand-applied washes — places Cruikshank squarely in the Gillray–Rowlandson tradition of multi-panel satirical prints whose compartmentalised compositions directly prefigure the comic-strip page.