Gillray's Works
A Chronological Catalogue of His Prints
NOTE: The catalog file is a large table (over a thousand entries) and contains links to over 500 commentaries. Depending upon internet traffic, your browser may take up to 30 seconds to load the entire page. If you see a white screen where the catalog should be, do not despair. The catalog WILL appear.
One of the problems of studying Gillray's development as an artist is that his prints have been somewhat arbitrarily divided into political and personal/miscellaneous satires. This is the approach of both Thomas Wright in his Historical and Descriptive Account of the Caricatures of James Gillray and M. Dorothy George in her Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires in the British Museum. And it has continued in the selections of his work by Draper Hill and Richard Godfrey. It also ignores the prints that are not considered satires, and thus provides a somewhat distorted or limited sense of his capabilities as an artist and printmaker. To see Gillray's work as he saw it—as a day by day, year by year effort—you must laboriously compare dates on prints and then try to keep them all in your head.
The following catalogue is an attempt to address that problem. Here you can find a listing of all the prints attributed to James Gillray, satiric or otherwise, in what I believe is their proper chronological order. I also indicate the orientation and size of the print as well as some of the archives where these prints can be found. For the curious or confused, I have also provided a more complete explanation of my approach. If an entry is highlighted, that means that I have written a commentary for that print. If the title of the print on my commentary page is highlighted, that means that there is a larger image to be seen by clicking on the link.
I have also included a link here to the opening and closing dates of the parliamentary sessions while Gillray was actively producing prints so that you can see to what extent his production of political and social caricatures coincides with sessions and recesses.
This is a work in progress. I have no editor or proofreader; I do my own writing, my own HTML coding, and my own web design. Since I launched this site on June 1st, 2015, the 200th anniversary of Gillray's death, I have continued to add features and commentaries, and to make other changes that I hope will improve the interest, usabiity, and accuracy of the site. Every page has a Last Modified date (usually at the bottom of the page) so you can tell when it was last edited. Alas, the Last Modified date does not discriminate between minor cosmetic or editing changes (correcting the format or fixing a typo) and a significant addition. So on the Contact Information page I have added a form where you can subscribe to be alerted when I make a substantive change to the site. I have also included my email address. So please feel free to contact me with corrections or suggestions.
Last Modified: Sunday, 29-Jan-2023 15:46:51 MST
| Title/Year | Date | Orientation | Size | BM | Bohn | NPG | LWL | CU | FARL | PU | LC |
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