The Scourge of Napoleon

If William Hogarth can be seen as the founder of modern cartoons and caricature, then the father of the modern political cartoon was James Gillray (1756-1815) whose 250th birthday is celebrated this year. He was also the first professional political war cartoonist, and in the same way that the New Zealander David Low, the Dutchman Louis Raemaekers and the Australian Will Dyson later produced some of the most memorable cartoon images of Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Stalin and Kaiser Wilhelm in the twentieth century, so too did Gillray become the scourge of that other great European dictator of modern times, Napoleon Bonaparte.