700 Hoboes / Discuss

xadrian    says:

I got this from my job. One of the Exec. Assists. had a few paintings on her wall and I asked about them. They were very caricaturish. She gave me a pamphlet about them, as follows:

Near the end of the 18th century, caricatures began to appear in Vanity Fair, a leading society magazine of Victorian and Edwardian England. The magazine was founded in 1868 by Thomas Gibson Bowles and featured a variety of social and political items.

Circulation was slow at first, but popularity surged with the appearance of the full-page chromolithographed caricatures beginning in 1869. One caricature in each issue was of a prominent man or woman of the day. The caricatures of Vanity Fair becaome key feature of the magazine. By the magainze's final issue in 1914, more than 2,000 caricatures graced its pages; 79 of these were doctors and scientists.

Bowles' satirical wit and hidden references enabled him to capture the personality and life of the "victim" or person in caricature. No one was beyond Bowles' satiric rebukes when we believed such assaults were merited. Needless to say, the magazine had its political biases (pro-Tory and anti-Liberal).

The Vanity Fair caricatures are still very popular today and are often found in antique shops, sporting venues, and professional offices. The physicians and scientists depicted were usually more reserved, more pictorial, and less satiric than the politicians and clergymen. Some of the physicians are generally unknown now and were only popular because of their prominent patients.

The great majority of the weekly caricatures in Vanity Fair were drawn by Sir Leslie Ward (1851-1922). His first caricature appeared in the magzine in 1873 and was unsigned, but all his subsequent ones were signed "Spy."

The pamplet goes on to describe the caricatures we have in the collection. I was more impressed with the volume and duration of the project. I was also interested the many parallels between that and our little project here.
Originally posted at 10:48AM, 28 August 2006 PDT (permalink)
xadrian edited this topic 70 months ago.