Originally Published: 2003-06-22

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Other works are more sombre, depicting the misery of the "liberated" France after the death of Louis XIV. Contrasting panels show stick-thin Frenchmen munching on onions for dinner while the rich English carve into their sides of roast beef. "The Zenith of French Glory" is a masterwork that shows a Paris burning to the ground with priests hung by their necks. Another image features an overweight Charlotte Corday, boasting about her claim to fame as the murderer of Jean-Paul Marat before an impressed French court. You have to remember that these descriptive and powerful images were created in the days before photography was used to describe world events, and what is startling about them is their ability to convey so much information in one panel. Back then, when so many were illiterate, a picture really was worth a thousand words.
Gillray appealed, of course, to public opinion and was a pioneer in doing so: for he knew that his exposure of abuses and follies (and not merely political ones) would help limit them. Back then, public criticism was thus essential to public progress, and in some ways he had more power than the throne. He was known to single-handedly ruin the careers of several prominent citizens simply with a stroke of his pen. Gillray's cartoons ridiculed kings, priests, doctors, society figures and statesmen with no mercy, picturing them in the act of relieving themselves, groping bosoms and wallowing in self-indulgence.
What is most astounding about the exhibition is that it reminds us of the original purpose and power of the press, which was to expose corruption and appeal to higher ideals. Gillray lived in a world where there was such a thing as an independent press that did not have to pander to advertising giants and pressure from the government.
Behind Gillray's critical drawings was an appeal for utopia and a humanitarianism that was way ahead of its time and his drawing set the stage for freedom of the press in the post-Napoleonic era. Gillray's greatness was more than artistic: he proved by example that public opinion could be mobilized for the betterment of society, and that social criticism could be fierce and uncompromising yet also good-natured and hilarious at the same time.

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