Word: gillray
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...Gillray's works the Library has the largest collection existing; it includes several hundred copies, many of them the original color-and-ink drawings. About a dozen are now on exhibition...
...Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Room at present contains selections from one of the Library's most interesting historical collections, the cartoons of James Gillray...
Born in 1757, Gillray soon developed remarkable ability at caricaturing, and before his death in 1815 had come to wield perhaps a more powerful influence than any other Britisher not directly affiliated with a political party. His cartoons touched every possible matter of public interest; and as he lived in a period of fast-occurring and momentous events, to follow his sketches is to learn the history of the times...
...second etching portrays a more personal scene in 1798. At a birthday party in honor of Fox, the Duke of Norfolk proposed such vehement toasts in favor of Parliamentary reform that he was dismissed by the Crown. This, too, Gillray has touched with insight and humor...
Later, in 1803, word came across the Strait of Dover that Napoleon was preparing to invade England; and the French Assembly was reported to have declared that England could not cope single-handed with the armies of the Tricolor. In one of his most elaborate and brilliant drawings, Gillray shows the thick-set Napoleon urging his fleet on; the chief interest, however, lies in the different reactions seen in the faces of the onlookers in England--Sheridan making a dramatic speech, and Fox hiding behind...