[Lord Amherst]

This is one of at least five experiments in portrait caricature that Gillray attempted in the space of a couple of months in 1780. They included portraits of Lady Mount Edgcumbe (05/18/1780), Lady Cecilia Johnston (05/18/1780), the Earl of Hertford (06/01/1780), and Lord Kelly (06/01/1780). I call them experiments because they are quite small (in this case 9.4 by 6.5 cm or 3.7 by 2.5 inches); they vary in quality (the earliest portraits of the two women being easily the best); and they were not used or repeated for approximately two years, when Gillray adapted his caricature of the Earl of Hertford for Dame Rat, and Her Poor Little Ones published in March of 1782. Indeed in the case of [Lord Amherst], Gillray seems to have cared so little about the effort that he didn't bother to fix the backward "3" in the date of publication, an obvious mistake which could easily have been corrected.

We don't know why he chose the subjects he did for these experiments or why it took him so long to incorporate caricature into his standard satiric practice. But we should note that all of these men and women had distinctive profiles which lent themselves to traditional portrait caricature (which usually portrayed its subjects in profile). They would certainly have made the job of the would-be caricaturist easier.

But though simple enough to create these caricatures for a man of Gillray's talents, he seems to have been comfortable with the standard practice of deriving the faces in his prints from either national stereotypes (see The Dutchman in the Dumps) or from well-known portraits (see the portrait of Vestris Senior in Regardez Moi). Indeed if there were ever an opportunity to use a caricature portrait of Lord Amherst in a larger satiric print, it was in June and July of 1780 when Amherst was infamous for his role in leading the British troops against their own countrymen during the Gordon Riots (June 2-7).

Perhaps one reason why Gillray did not care to pursue caricature at this time is suggested by the other prints he was occupied with in the summer of 1780. At roughly the same time that he was creating these small, quick, caricature sketches, Gillray had probably already begun work on two standard sized and highly accomplished "serious" prints (published in August and September) illustrating scenes from Henry Fielding's Tom Jones—Sophia,Honour, & the Chambermaid, and Tom Jones, Partridge, & the Beggar. This, he must have thought was, where his real future lay. So though he continued to produce sporadic satiric prints like Ah Grant a Me Von Letel Bite and Les Plaisir du Menage, most of the following year was spent doing "serious" prints, like portraits of Hyder Ally and Pensionary Van Berkel and a number of sentimental prints like The Return.

Sources and Reading

• Commentary from the British Museum on [Lord Amherst].
• "Jeffery Amherst, 1st Baron Amherst," Wikipedia