Friday, January 29, 2010

Pre-Raphaelite Cartoons

Thanks to Art Magick for letting me post these wonderful Victorian cartoons parodying the art of some artists we may know around here.

Scene at a Hot-Whisky-and-Water House. "Now then, altogether, my piping bullfinches!" Chorus---

A caricature of Waterhouse's 'Circe' taken from an 1891 edition of 'Judy'. 'Judy' was a 19th century satirical magazine, a rival to the better known 'Punch'

A lamentation from the satirical magazine Punch upon reviewing an exhibition at London's Grosvenor Gallery.

From "The G.G.G., or Grosvenor Gallery Guide"

"Once more on our "Gee-Gee," and "yet we are not Hobby!" which might be what the kettle in the fender said to the fire-irons. Now for the G.G. (occasionally) Guy'd. We burn - burn-jones - with excitement to see what that eminent Pagan Aesthetic has to show us. We dash at the Catalogue. We rush at the Busy "B.'s" in the Index. Heavens! From "BALL" to "BYWATER" without a BURNE-JONES. Stay! Is he modestly under "J."? No. JACKLING and JOPSON - I beg their pardons, I should have JOPLING and JACKSON exhaust that portion of the alphabet between them. "What, no JONES! So he died, and she very imprudently," &c., &c.

O where, and O where is my little BURNE-JONES?
O where on earth can he be?
With his tinsel and gold and his sage-green tones,
He's not in this Galleree!

From 'Punch', June 25, 1881


Never fear, Punch found Burne-Jones the following year and came up with another pun:

'Take me, Take my trunk". By E. Burne-Jones, or 'Ty-Burn Jones' for the deadly liveliness of the figures.

Punch, May 20, 1882

4 comments:

Von said...

Most amusing!

Hermes said...

What a good find - made me smile.

cinta / sepi / sayu said...

i love anything jw waterhouse paints. mostly. hehe. xo

goetzkluge said...

As for Pre-Raphaelite Cartoons you perhaps like Henry Holiday's illustrations to Lewis Carroll's "The Hunting of the Snark". I used one of them for my work (introduction to workload issues, ISO 10075) in Germany without knowing too much about Henry Holiday, the Pre-Raphaelites, the Snark, etc. Initially Pre-Raphaelite arts bored me. But then I accidentally discovered how Holiday worked. It was a big surprise to me.

Carroll's, Holiday's (and Joseph Swain's) masterpiece is really fascinating - although I found out, that perhaps a few "Carrollians" prefer the illustrations to have "no meaning". The Snark and the illustrations seem to sell better as entertaining "Nonsense". In contrary to that, I think, the poem has a very serious core.

http://holiday.snrk.de/ is the result of my amateurish guesswork. Perhaps I "see" too much in the pictures. What do you think?