"French Invasion or Buonaparte Landing in Great Britain" was first published on 10 June 1803 by Hannah Humphrey at the height of British panic over a potential French attack. It was part of a series of prints Gillray produced following the sudden breakdown of the Peace of Amiens and the resumption of the Napoleonic Wars in May 1803.
The etching shows classic, exaggerated "Anti-Gallican" (anti-French) sentiment to mock the military ambitions of France while reassuring the British public that there was no danger.
The British Defense are on the right and are shown as orderly and disciplined. A Royal Artillery gun squadron stands firm atop the white cliffs of Dover. They are unleashing a devastating volley of cannon fire down onto the approaching invaders.
In sharp contrast, the French forces are depicted as a chaotic, panicked mob thrown into complete disarray. Their transport ships and small carriages are shattered by British artillery.
Napoleon Bonaparte is positioned in the middle of the chaos on his white horse. He is shown looking back over his shoulder in utter terror, dropping his sabre as he flees from the British onslaught.
During this period of intense national anxiety, the British government actively relied on cartoonists and broadside writers to stoke patriotism and boost recruitment for volunteer militias. Gillray's print successfully shifted public perception of Napoleon from a terrifying, unstoppable conqueror to an incompetent, easily panicked target of ridicule.This specific caricature played a massive role in cementing Gillray's famous pop-culture legacy of "Little Boney"—the fiction that Napoleon was a tiny, temperamental man always throwing tantrums.
Gillray was one of five children, and the only one to survive to maturity. In 1770 he was apprenticed to Harry Ashby, a London writing in engraver, and five years later W. Humphrey published a few of Gillray's illustrations including satirical works. By the time Gillray commenced his career satire was old, but personal caricature was in its infancy. Other exponents in this form of art were soon overshadowed by Gillray's superior craftsmanship. His figures were full of vitality, titillating and reflective of some political crisis or private scandal. As his popularity increased so did demand by the public to see more of his work. In the rapidly changing politics of the late18th century he would produce a plate in twenty-four hours. Although sometimes overlooked his speech bubbles were elaborate and Gillray would spend considerable time composing and redrafting the text.
Between 1791 to 1807 his career continued successfully in association with William and Hannah Humphrey. There after Gillray's health began to suffer. He eventually slipped into madness and died shortly before the Battle of Waterloo on June 1st 1815. Hannah, who had a close relationship with him nursed Gillray through out his final years and following his death the copper plates then formed part of Hannah's estate when she died in 1818. The executor's of Hannah's estate sold Gillray's painstakingly worked plates for there second hand copper weight. Hearing of this, the then publisher, Bohn who had previously expressed an interest in buying the plates set about purchasing them from a variety of different sources. Eventually acquiring over 500. In 1851 Bohn republished the engravings in a large folio volume, "The Works of James Gillray".
