13/06/2020

High Spirits by Kate Heard

I got High Spirits by Kate Heard – The Comic Art of Thomas Rowlandson from Buckingham Palace, when I visited it in January. In that occasion I also got George IV by the same author.

His Royal Highness The Duke of Edinburgh said that ‘There are, of course, two sides to the art of caricatures – the caricaturist and the subjects of his work. The latter, of which I am one, certainly need a sense of humour in order to enjoy a caricature of themselves. They need to be masochists to collect cartoons about themselves.’

There are over 100 caricatures in the book, all with detailed explanations, and most of them by the English caricaturist Thomas Rowlandson (1757–1827). Some are political in nature, some deal with everyday life. I can’t say that I like caricatures, as a genre. I think it is very easy to mock, especially when it comes to politics, but that only infantilizes the discussion. Unsurprisingly I had the same feeling when it came to Georgian caricatures.

Considering the current debates on race and views on gender roles, a few of the caricatures are not exactly PC, especially the misogynistic ones. But I’m glad that those were included because it shows how people at that time thought. Personally I’m not bothered at all by what was considered acceptable 200 years ago. I just only hope that in the next 200 years people’s tolerance will develop as much as it did in the last couple of centuries.

Overall it is an interesting book and I’ve enjoyed it, hence the 5 stars.