Social Pictorial Satire

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About this book

Pen-and-ink drawings become a way of recording everyday English life in George Du Maurier's illustrated discussion of comic art. Drawing on his own work for Punch, he considers how an artist turns domestic incidents, clothing, manners and familiar social types into humour. He distinguishes the public's response to a picture from a fellow artist's judgment of its technique, and explains how both kinds of criticism can help a drawing take shape.

Personal recollections of John Leech and Charles Keene give these reflections their human detail. Du Maurier remembers meeting Leech and describes Keene sketching streets, vehicles and landscapes with pens carried in his pocket. His attention to line, perspective and the trained hand makes the book useful for readers interested in illustration, while its observations on changing fashions show how comic pictures preserve the look and habits of an earlier society.

About the author

George Du Maurier

George du Maurier (1834-1896) was born in Paris and spent most of his career in London as a cartoonist for Punch, where he satirised Victorian social pretension for decades. Losing the sight of his left eye as a young man ended his ambitions as a painter and pushed him toward illustration and, late in life, fiction.