James Gillray (1756–1815) was one of the greatest caricaturists of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Britain. Now, exactly two hundred years after his death, his art and impact are being celebrated in an exhibition in the Ashmolean Museum based on the extensive collections of his work in New College, Oxford and ably curated by the distinguished Canadian scholar Todd Porterfield of the Université de Montréal.1

As we can see from the exhibits, Gillray ruthlessly and relentlessly mocked the royal family of his day: King George III, Queen Charlotte, and, of course, their dissolute son, the Prince of Wales, who was to become the Prince Regent. Needless to say, the Prince had an account with Gillray’s publisher to keep up with his latest lampoons. Gillray had no fixed political principles and happily caricatured both the Whigs and the Tories and their leaders, including both Charles James Fox and Pitt the Younger. He has been called the “caricaturist without conscience” and “a hired gun,” but he had a very real talent to sell. What made Gillray’s fame possible was the rise of British democracy with a free press and a vigorous clash of parties and factions in Parliament. Gillray’s work could never have been produced in the authoritarian countries of Continental Europe.

The exhibition is entitled “Love Bites” because the curators have selected from