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| James Gillray "And catch the living Manners as they rise . . . " 1794 hand-colored etching and aquatint British Museum |
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| James Gillray A Lady putting on her cap 1795 hand-colored etching British Museum |
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| James Gillray Parasols for 1795 1795 hand-colored etching British Museum |
James Gillray (1757-1815) – Nothing is known of his early training beyond the fact that at a fitting age he was (like Hogarth) apprenticed to a letter-engraver. Whether this was because he had shown a talent for drawing is not stated, but he seems to have begun to design during his apprenticeship. Becoming tired of a monotonous employment, he ran away and joined a troop of strollers. Quitting these again, after a brief experience, to enter himself as a student of the Royal Academy, he began speedily to acquire that grasp and knowledge of figure drawing which is one of his characteristics . . . [From about 1782] until 1811, when he engraved his last plate, he continued to pour out the characteristic pictorial satires which for nearly thirty years delighted Londoners . . . The royal family, the court, the nobility, the ministry, 'all sorts and conditions of men,' were freely ridiculed by this daring censor, who, after publishing with Holland of Oxford Street, Fores of Piccadilly, and others, finally took up his residence with, and practically confined his efforts to, the establishment of Miss (by courtesy Mrs.) Hannah Humphrey . . . Here, while the artist was working above in his eager, feverish way, often wounding his fingers by the 'burr' thrown up in the rapid progress of his needle over the copper, his brightly coloured works were dispensed in the shop beneath by Miss Humphrey or her giggling assistant, Betty Marshall. One of his prints . . . represents the famous old shop, with its accustomed crowd outside (a crowd often so great that the passer-by had to quit the footway in order to get by). . . . Gillray continued to be an inmate of Miss Humphrey's house until he died. She made a handsome income by his labours, and in return supplied her retiring and somewhat morose lodger with every requirement. His health at length yielded to growing habits of intemperance, fostered, it is only charitable to suppose, by the constant strain upon his inventive powers, and about the end of 1811 he sank into comparative imbecility, passing a great part of the latter years of his life confined in an upper chamber of Miss Humphrey's house.
– extracts from the Dictionary of National Biography, edited by Leslie Stephen (1885)
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| James Gillray Ladies' Dress as it soon will be 1796 hand-colored etching British Museum |
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| James Gillray The Fashionable Mamma, or, The Convenience of Modern Dress (wet-nurses having been superseded under the influence of Rousseau) 1796 hand-colored etching British Museum |
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| James Gillray Lady Godina's Rout, or, Peeping Tom spying out Pope Joan (the card game in progress was called 'Pope Joan') 1796 hand-colored etching and engraving British Museum |
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| James Gillray Monstrosities of 1799 - Scene, Kensington Gardens 1799 hand-colored etching British Museum |
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| James Gillray A Lyoness (Polly Lyon de Symonds, née Goldsmid, daughter and wife of financiers) 1801 hand-colored etching British Museum |
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| James Gillray A Master of Ceremonies, sketch'd at the Castle, Richmond (Monsieur L'Amour, director of Assemblies at the Castle Inn, Richmond) 1803 hand-colored etching British Museum |
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| James Gillray Progress of the Toilet - The Stays 1810 hand-colored etching British Museum |
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| James Gillray Progress of the Toilet - The Wig 1810 hand-colored etching British Museum |
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| James Gillray Progress of the Toilet - Dress Completed 1810 hand-colored etching British Museum |
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| James Gillray Grace, Fashion, and Manners, from the Life ca. 1810 hand-colored etching British Museum |
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| James Gillray The Graces in a High Wind - a scene taken from Nature in Kensington Gardens 1810 hand-colored etching British Museum |