Half Natural
This is Gillray's first portrait caricature of the playwright, fop, and fashionista, Mr. Lumley Skeffington wearing the latest trend in men's clothing, a Jean de Bry coat. In an unusual departure from the conventional portrait profile, Gillray shows him from the back, the better to appreciate the absurdly puffy sleeves and padded shoulders of the new French style. But his face is turned to the right so that we recognize the familiar Skeffington profile that Gillray was to reproduce in numerous later prints, including "So Skiffy Skipt On with his Wonted Grace" (1800) A Pair of Polished Gentlemen (1801) and Dilettanti-Theatricals, or a Peep at the Green Room (1803).
© Trustees of the British Museum
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Portrait caricatures are traditionally set against a blank or non-descript background as in Gillray's So Skiffy Skipt On with his Wonted Grace. But here again Gillray departs from the typical portrait caricature by situating Skeffington on the crest of a hill in a natural but somewhat forbidding location (Putney Heath?) with a path leading to a gibbet, while birds (of prey?) glide overhead. The title, then, may be intended to reinforce the contrast between the highly artificial Skeffington and the unlikely natural environment he finds himself in. But since the colors of his dress— the forest green of his jacket and the tan of his top boots— blend in with the green of the distant hills and the brown of the ground he stands on, perhaps he can be considered at least "half natural." And I can't help but wonder whether the circling birds and gibbet are a reminder that fashions and their followers come and go, and that all things–natural and half-natural–must pass.
Sources and Reading
- Commentary from the British Museum on Half Natural.
- "Lumley Skeffington," Wikipedia
- "Skeffington, Lumley," Dictionary of National Biography
- Thomas Wright and R.H. Evans, Historical and Descriptive Account of the Caricatures of James Gillray #471.
- Thomas Wright and Joseph Grego, The Works of James Gillray, the Caricaturist; With the History of His Life and Times, p. 266.
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