- Isaac Cruikshank
Isaac Cruikshank (1756 - 1811), Scottish painter and caricaturist, was born in
Edinburgh . His sonsIsaac Robert Cruikshank (1789-1856) and George Cruikshank also became artists, and the latter in particular achieved fame as anillustrator andcaricaturist . Cruikshank is known for his social and political satire.His parents were Elizabeth Davidson (b. c.1725), daughter of a gardener, and Andrew Crookshanks (c.1725–c.1783), a former customs inspector dispossessed for his role in the Jacobite uprising of 1745. He studied with a local artist, possible John Kay (1742–1826), and travelled with his master to London in 1783. He married Mary MacNaughton (1769–1853) in 1788 and the couple had five known children, two of whom died in infancy. A daughter, Margaret Eliza, also a promising artist, died at the age of eighteen.
Cruikshank's first known publications were etchings of Edinburgh "types", from 1784. He produced illustrations for books about the theatre, did the frontispiece for "Witticisms and Jests of Dr Johnson" (1791), and illustrated George Shaw's extensive "General Zoology" (1800–26). His watercolours were exhibited, but in order to make a living it was more lucritive to produce prints and caricatures. He was responsive to the marketplace but firm in his dislikes of
Napoleon and political radicals. He and Gillray developed the figure ofJohn Bull , the nationalistic representation of a solid British yeoman.Publisher John Roach was a friend and patron, and he later worked with print dealer S. W. Fores and Johnny Fairburn. He also collaborated, with G. M. Woodward, and later, with his son George.
Cruikshank died of alcohol poisoning at the age of fifty-five as a result of a drinking contest and is buried near his home in London.
Isaac Cruikshank was a contemporary of
James Gillray andThomas Rowlandson , and he was part of what has been called "the Golden Age of British Caricature." Some have called his work "uneven" [Robert L. Patten, “ [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/6844 Cruikshank , Isaac (1764–1811),”] "Oxford Dictionary of National Biography". Ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. (Oxford: OUP, 2004. 11 May 2007.)] but at its best it provides a vivid insight into the cultural and political preoccupations of the British during the decades at the turn of the nineteenth century.Notes
Electronic resources
* [https://www.npg.org.uk/live/search/person.asp?LinkID=mp06840&role=art Cruikshank's work at the National Portrait Gallery]
* [http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/cruikshank_isaac.html Isaac Cruikshank at Artcyclopedia]
* [http://bugpowder.com/andy/e.bc_cruikshank.isaac.html Isaac Cruikshank - Cartoons]Resources
*The British Museum, the Huntington Library in California, and The Houghton Library at Harvard University all have significant holdings of Cruikshank's work.
*George, Mary Dorothy. "Hogarth to Cruikshank: Social Change in Graphic Satire". 1967.
*Nygren, Edward J., ed. "Isaac Cruikshank and the Politics of Parody: Watercolors in the Huntington Collection". University of California Press, 2005. ISBN 0873281470; ISBN 978-0873281478
*Patten, Robert L.. “ [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/6844 Cruikshank , Isaac (1764–1811).”] "Oxford Dictionary of National Biography". Ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004. 11 May 2007.
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