{"id":6166,"date":"2021-03-08T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-03-08T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/?p=6166"},"modified":"2026-07-08T14:32:50","modified_gmt":"2026-07-08T18:32:50","slug":"the-new-morality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/the-new-morality\/","title":{"rendered":"The New Morality"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

by Daniel Johnson, English; Digital Humanities; and Film, Television, and Theatre Librarian<\/em><\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

James Gillray\u2019s New Morality<\/em> (1798) is a loaded work from one of England\u2019s greatest caricaturists at the height of his powers. The eighteenth-century had witnessed a flowering of both English art generally (with, for example, the establishment of the Royal Academy of Arts in 1768), and caricature specifically, especially in the work of Gillray\u2019s predecessor, William Hogarth (1697 \u2013 1764; for an example in RBSC, see Hogarth\u2019s illustrations for Hudibras<\/em><\/a>, below), although some care should be taken with terminology. Hogarth was concerned enough by the slight implied by “caricature,” that he created \u00a0a print in 1743, \u201cCharacters and Caricaturas,\u201d to emphasis his separation from the latter style. As the editors of the Public Domain Review<\/em> write<\/a>, “for Hogarth the comic character face, with its subtle exploration of an individual’s human nature, was vastly superior to the gross formal exaggerations of the grotesque caricature.”<\/p>\n\n\n

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Comic grotesquery would remain controversial, but it provided a powerful vehicle for visual expression, and its exaggeration need not imply a lack of technical mastery. Gillray was an early member of the Royal Academy (admitted April, 1778), and during \u201ca sabbatical\u201d from satirical work in 1783-85, he produced capable, non-satiric prints ranging \u201cfrom nostalgic pastoral illustrations to \u2018eyewitness\u2019 reconstructions of celebrated marine disasters\u201d for Robert Wilkinson\u201d (Hill xx). His failure to \u201csecure commissions\u201d from Benjamin West and John Boydell (an example of whose famous Shakespeare illustration commissions, featured in the RBSC\u2019s \u201cConstructing Shakespeare\u201d Spotlight Exhibit<\/a> in 2016, can be found in RBSC holdings Graphic Illustrations<\/a> and A Collection of Prints<\/a>), helped determine his future direction; by \u201cthe early nineties Gillray finally decided to devote himself fully to the profession of caricature\u201d (Hill xxi). Although his earlier \u201ccommercial failure was absolute and ignominious, yet it is paradoxical that his laborious hours cutting and notching with his engraver\u2019s burin and stippling tools should have immeasurably strengthened his hand as a caricaturist\u201d (Godfrey 15). Nor was capturing the exaggerated likenesses a trivial exercise. Without the benefit of willing models, let alone photographs, artists had to hunt \u201con big game safaris in the wilds of Westminster\u201d and memorize faces from afar \u2013 \u201cEarl Spencer, when warned decades later that there was a caricaturist in the gallery of the House of Lords, shrank on the front bench and \u2018sat huddled-up [with his] face and beard in his knees\u2019\u201d (Hill x).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By the time Gillray produced The New Morality<\/a><\/em>, in 1798, he was making some of his \u201cmost artistically brilliant and inventive images\u201d (Hallett 36). He had also settled down from the pose of \u201ca detached, cynical \u2018hired gun,\u2019 concealing any actual political convictions beneath a veil of ambivalence and irony\u201d to a closer apparent alignment with the Tory government, which some allege was stirred by \u201ca secret annual pension of \u00a3200\u201d from 1797-1801 (Hill xxii and Hallett 35). Indeed, The New Morality<\/em> was commissioned for the Anti-Jacobin Magazine<\/em> (though also issued on its own) to go along with the poetical \u201cNew Morality\u201d of George Canning, politician and eventual prime minister in 1827. The imputation of bribery was a detractor and source of embarrassment for some critics, though Gillray\u2019s sympathies had started to manifest some years before the pension.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The allegorical density of The New Morality <\/em>makes the image ripe for close and detailed analysis \u2013 an intense engagement supported by the magnifying glass of high resolution scanning at RBSC. The bookseller, Bernard Quaritch Ltd, describes the tableau thus:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the right of the print is L\u00e9paux, a member of the French Directory who had given prominence to Paine\u2019s Theophilanthropic sect, preaching from a stool and attended on his dais by grotesque Jacobin creatures, while behind him are the monstrous embodiments of Justice, Philanthropy (devouring the globe) and Rousseauian Sensibility. Prostrated immediately before L\u00e9paux are the two ass-headed figures of Coleridge and Southey, clutching their works, behind whom is seen the \u2018Cornucopia of Ignorance\u2019 and a flowerpot of plants resembling Jacobin hats with cockades. Out of the water rolls the monstrous Leviathan, resembling the misled Duke of Bedford (he has a fishhook through his nose), on whose neck rides the filthy Thelwall; on his back are Fox, Tierney and Nichols, waving their red bonnets[.] Emerging from the waves behind the Duke are diminutive sea-monsters and horned creatures clutching their works, while in the sky fly five grotesque birds, all representing various political radicals. In the foreground is a train of monsters: Paine as a crocodile (crying proverbial tears); Holcroft as a dwarfish figure in spectacles and leg-braces (Southey thought the likeness to be accurate); Godwin as an ass reading his Political Justice; and a snake representing David Williams, founder of the Royal Literary Fund.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

(N.B. The acquisition of Gillray\u2019s New Morality<\/em> at RBSC coincides with the acquisition of a number of books written by \u201cthe filthy Thelwall\u201d; RBSC\u2019s holdings of Thelwall can be found here<\/a>). The image\u2019s breathless and baroque movement across a vast cultural landscape of major and minor political, philosophical, and poetical figures is a visceral reminder that a highly charged, partisan news media is hardly a twenty-first century invention. Graphical satires \u201cfunctioned as powerful supplements to, and interventions in, the predominantly textual sphere of political journalism and printed social commentary [\u2026 in which newspapers and journals] were frequently subsidised [sic] by either the government or the opposition, and consequently functioned as propagandist mouthpieces for their policies\u201d (Hallett 35).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The physical qualities of the print are noteworthy in their own right. While the plate was designed for mass printing, the print itself bears witness to bespoke treatment in its coloration. According to Draper Hill, \u201cindividual copperplate etchings, available plain or exquisitely colored by hand, were collector\u2019s items from the moment of issue,\u201d and perhaps most interesting, we \u201cknow nothing\u201d of Gillray\u2019s \u201ccolorists; presumably they were teams of extremely accomplished ladies working in relays\u201d for the female printseller Hannah Humphrey, at whose residence Gillray lodged (ix, xi). Ironically, Gillray\u2019s \u201ctechnical wizardry\u201d with his engraving tools \u201cwould be concealed by the bright hand colouring which became the norm for a published print\u201d (Godfrey 15). Nevertheless, the colorized prints bear witness to a partnership with artisan labor, rendering each one a unique production.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Works Cited<\/h6>\n\n\n\n

Godfrey, Richard T. \u201cIntroduction.\u201d James Gillray: The Art of Caricature<\/em>, Tate Gallery Publishing, 2001, pp. 11\u201321, 38.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hallett, Mark. \u201cJames Gillray and the Language of Graphic Satire.\u201d James Gillray: The Art of Caricature<\/em>, Tate Gallery Publishing, 2001, pp. 23\u201337, 39.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hill, Draper, editor. The Satirical Etchings of James Gillray<\/em>. Dover Publications, 1976.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

James Gillray\u2019s New Morality (1798) is a loaded work from one of England\u2019s greatest caricaturists at the height of his powers. The eighteenth-century had witnessed a flowering of both English art generally (with, for example, the establishment of the Royal Academy of Arts in 1768), and caricature specifically, especially in the work of Gillray\u2019s predecessor, … Continue reading The New Morality<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1936,"featured_media":6176,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[75059,75061,12646],"tags":[77960,77966,75749],"class_list":["post-6166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fine-printing-book-arts","category-modern-european-cultures","category-miscellaneous","tag-broadsides-prints-posters","tag-england","tag-recent-acquisitions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1936"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6166"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6166\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12170,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6166\/revisions\/12170"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}