'Obscene' Gillray cartoons shown after 170 years
On one page Napoleon peeks through a set of curtains to spy on cavorting nudes. On another the Duke of York is in carnal embrace with his diminutive wife. A third depicts George III defecating into a hat.
The bound volume of cartoons by James Gillray, the 18th and 19th century artist whose satirical etchings were the forerunner of modern political cartoons, was once considered so obscene that it was seized by police.
Yesterday the pornography and obscenity team at the Ministry of Justice conceded that times have changed and handed it over to the Victoria and Albert Museum.
The cartoons were considered bawdy fun when they were first published individually in the late 18th century, but by the 1840s, when they were printed as a collection, they were sufficently outrageous for the publisher to withhold his name from the title page. The police of the Victorian era agreed. They impounded the book and handed it to government officials.
Read entire article at Times (UK)
The bound volume of cartoons by James Gillray, the 18th and 19th century artist whose satirical etchings were the forerunner of modern political cartoons, was once considered so obscene that it was seized by police.
Yesterday the pornography and obscenity team at the Ministry of Justice conceded that times have changed and handed it over to the Victoria and Albert Museum.
The cartoons were considered bawdy fun when they were first published individually in the late 18th century, but by the 1840s, when they were printed as a collection, they were sufficently outrageous for the publisher to withhold his name from the title page. The police of the Victorian era agreed. They impounded the book and handed it to government officials.