George Cruikshank

The life of George Cruikshank extended from September 27, 1792, to February 1, 1878, and the known work of his hand dates from 1799 to 1875. In 1840 Thackeray wrote of him as of a hero of his boyhood, asking jocundly, "Did we not forego tarts in order to buy his Breaking-up or his Fashionable Monstrosities of the year eighteen hundred and something?" In 1863, the year of Thackeray's death, Cruikshank was asked, by the committee who exhibited his Worship of Bacchus, to associate with that work some of his early drawings in order to prove that he was not his own grandfather.


For years before he reached the great but unsensational age at which he died, a sort of cult was vested in his longevity. Dated plates—that entitled "The Rose and the Lily" (1875) offers the last example—imply that his art figured to him finally as a kind of athleticism.


It was as if, in using his burin or needles, he was doing a "turn" before sightseers, with a hired Time innocuously scything on the platform beside him to show him off.