Black on White. A review of some British cartoons and caricatures of the last 200 years

Newspaper presses, news vendors and buyers, newspaper cartoons. David Low at work (on London rooftop) on drawing of Winston Churchill and Clement Attlee. Self portrait (The Painter and the Pug: Gulielmus Hogarth (1745)) by William Hogarth. A likeness of John Wilkes, but one that emphasised his least attractive features. The church of St. Nicholas, Chiswick, and Hogarth’s tombstone. Drawing of Hogarth’s house in the eighteenth century. The house today. Visitor looking at paintings, and book of Hogarth’s engravings. Engravings from the series Industry and Idleness (1747). Details from Gin Lane (1751) and Beer Street (1751). A Representation of the March of the Guards Towards Scotland in the Year 1745 (print after The March of the Guards to Finchley (1750)), and The Man of Taste (c.1732). Drawings in the classical style. Architectural features. Statuary. Quotation from Francis Gross defining caricature and its rules; illustrations from his book. James Gillray who defied these rules in his work. Site of Hannah Humphrey’s print shop in St James’s Street, and Gillray’s engraving, Very Slippy Weather (1808) showing the building when he lived there. Cutting an engraving plate. Book of Gillray’s caricatures. Farmer Giles (1809). A Squall (1810). Temperance Enjoying a Frugal Meal (1792). A Voluptuary under the Horrors of Digestion (1792). Dido, in Despair! (1801). Heavy seas, ruined tower, cannon. Some of Gillray’s work from the Napoleonic period: John Bull’s Progress (1793), John Bull Bothered – or – The Geese Alarming the Capitol; Britannia between Scylla and Charybdis (1793). End of the Irish Invasion – or – The Destruction of the French Armada (1797). Fighting for the Dunghill – or – Jack Tar Settling Buonaparte (1798), Ci-Devant Occupation – or Madame Talian and the Empress Josephine Dancing Naked Before Barrass in the Winter of 1797 – A Fact (1805). The Handwriting upon the Wall (1803). George Cruikshank’s Massacre at St. Peter’s (1819) on the Peterloo Massacre. Duke of Wellington as the enemy of reform and other political ideas. Industrialisation. Drawings by Thomas Rowlandson of village and rural life. Cruikshank lampooning extreme fashions in Monstrosities of 1822 (1822), Humming Birds – or – A Dandy Trio (1819), etc. Drawing of London Fog; railway scenes including Mr John Bull in a Quandary – or – The Anticipated Effects of the Railway Calls. Actual railway. Carving a wooden printing block for Punch. Various railway drawings including one by William Thackeray of himself and Douglas Jerrold overhearing railway carriage conversation about the magazine. Portrait of editor Mark Lemon. Various drawings (including likenesses of themselves) by Charles Keene, John Leech; effects of women’s emancipation. John Tenniel – Britannias in New Lands, or Comforting the Irish in Throes of Unrest; An "Ugly Rush" (1870) with John Bull against women’s suffrage. God Save the Queen (1862), commemorating the Silver Jubilee. George du Maurier’s drawings of Victorian society "as it liked to imagine itself". Max Beerbohm’s The rare, the rather awful visits of Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, to Windsor Castle. Edwardian traffic scene at Piccadilly Circus. Drawings by Phil May, one of the earliest artists to take advantage of the new technique of photo-engraving. Max Beerbohm’s Mr Rudyard Kipling takes a bloomin’ day aht, on the Blasted ’Eath, along with Britannia,’ is gurl.

Photograph of Will Dyson. Film of Suffrage march. Dyson’s Miss Davison (1914), and other comments on suffrage. World War I recruiting poster; actuality footage of recruitment and combat scenes. Bruce Bairnsfather’s Old Bill. Bernard Partridge for Punch, In Honour of the British Navy. Crowds celebrating victory. Dyson’s Curious, I Seem to Hear a Child Weeping (1919). The Hatching (1920) by David Low. Comments on unemployment, the League of Nations, and war: Low’s Safety First (1936), etc. Thoughts on other changes in society. Sidney Strube’s "Little Man" and John Millar Watts’s "Pop". Sequence by H. M. Bateman showing man struggling with deck chair. Comments on society and the Wall Street Crash. Cartoons by Pont (Graham Laidler). Low’s "How much will you give me not to kick your pants for, say, twenty five years?" (1936); The Man Who Took the Lid Off (1935); Stepping Stones to Glory (1936); Where Next, Mein Führer? (1940); other comments on the coming war. Cartoons by Osbert Lancaster and Carl Giles. Some of Ronald Searle’s St Trinian’s drawings. The slowness of "man’s moral progress" compared with the speed of technological advances. Low’s Life or Death: "Baby play with nice ball?" (1945). Caption: "The art of caricature lies halfway between laughter and tears" written and signed by Low.

THE B.B.C TELEVISION SERVICE
in association with
THE ARTS COUNCIL OF GREAT BRITAIN
and
THE EDUCATIONAL TELEVISION AND RADIO CENTER OF THE UNITED STATES.
Script Reg Groves;
With advice from Low;
Spoken by Alistair Cooke;
Camera Edward Lloyd;
Special Photography Studio Film Laboratories Ltd.;
Cartoons supplied by Ben Weinreb;
Editing and Sound Effects Eric Wood;
Score Devised by William Alwyn;
Directed by John Read.