Original antique engraving by James Gillray, originally published in 1793. This print is from the Bohn Edition of 1851.
On January 21, 1793, Louis the XVI of France was guillotined, and less than two weeks later, France declared war on Great Britain and the Dutch Republic. Whatever sympathies, Gillray and many other Englishmen (e.g. the poet Wordsworth) may have had for the French revolutionists, those sympathies were now effectively withdrawn owing to the growing brutality reported in Paris and by the threat perceived to the British homeland. Gillray produced one of the most famous of his anti-revolutionary prints,The Zenith of French Glory; The Pinnacle of Libertyon February 12th and followed it up with his most sanguinary print,The Blood of the Murdered Crying for Vengeanceon February 16th. Both prominently featured the execution of the French King.
Following the practice he had begun in 1792, Gillray portrayed the revolutionary sans-culottes not in their preferred working class pantaloons but literally sans culottes without breeches at all. And given the prominence of the clergymen and judge hanging from the lantern posts in The Zenith of French Gloryit is likely that he had heard the revolutionary anthemCa irain its more radical form which contained lines like the following:
All will be well, all will be well!
We'll have no more nobles or priests.
The aristocrats will swing from the posts.
And equality will reign in the streets.
The sans-culotte fiddler with his bloody daggers inZenithmay be playing theCa ira, but with the burning church in the background, it's hard not to associate this image of heartless barbarity with the infamous cruelty of Nero who supposedly fiddled while Rome burned. The church has been identified by Draper Hill as the Eglise Notre-Dame-de l'Assomption which stands near to the Place de la Revolution where Louis was executed. But Gillray has, I believe, purposely drawn the church with a taller lantern like that of St. Paul's which would have made the threat to Britain just that much more real.
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".
