The image satirizes the ambitions of Napoleon Bonaparte and British Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger as they carve up the world, represented as a plum pudding, for themselves.
The cartoon, officially titledThe Plumb-pudding in danger;—or—State Epicures taking un Petit Souper, depicts a gaunt William Pitt and a small but hungry Napoleon seated at a dinner table.
The two leaders use a carving knife and a fork to greedily slice up a terrestrial globe.
Pittcalmly carves a slice of ocean, which includes the West Indies, using a trident-like fork that symbolizes British naval power.
Napoleon, meanwhile, excitedly attacks Europe, cutting away France, Holland, Spain, and Italy with his sword.
Gillray portrays the leaders as having insatiable appetites for power, which is consuming the world. The image comments on the geopolitical situation of 1805, where France controlled much of Europe while Britain dominated the seas.
The cartoon was published in February 1805, shortly after Napoleon had made a peace overture to Britain. Gillray's work suggested that the two rival powers would be unable to peacefully divide the world and were heading toward further conflict, a prediction that proved accurate with the Battle of Trafalgar and the Battle of Austerlitz later that year.
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".
