The King of Brobdingnag, and Gulliver casts King George III as the giant King of Brobdingnag and Napoleon Bonaparte as a minuscule Gulliver. Published shortly after the breakdown of the Peace of Amiens, the artwork serves as a powerful piece of anti-French propaganda. It uses Jonathan Swift's 1726 novel Gulliver's Travels to mock Napoleon's imperial ambitions while asserting British moral and military superiority.
King George III is shown in profile, dressed in a military uniform and wearing the Order of the Garter star. He looks down through a spyglass with an air of calm, paternal curiosity.
Napoleon Bonaparte stands directly in the palm of George III's right hand. He wears a massive tricorn hat and strikes a fiercely combative, pompous pose that looks ridiculous given his tiny scale.
The backdrop features minimal detail, using heavy, dark clouds to draw all focus toward the stark contrast in size between the two figures.
It targeted Napoleon's grand political speeches regarding his campaigns in Egypt and his new French Constitution. By rendering Napoleon as a tiny, powerless creature, Gillray weaponised psychological diminishment to turn a feared military threat into an object of public ridicule.
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".
