The First Kiss this Ten Years!

The impetus for this print was the signing of the Treaty of Amiens on March 25, 1802 which put an end (albeit temporarily) to the hostilities between England and France which had been ongoing since April of 1792. Coming almost 10 months after the fact, it is NOT, however, a celebration of the treaty, but one of a number of prints initially hinting and later trumpeting Gillray's (and Britain's) dissatisfaction with it.

Stylistically, the print harkens back to Gillray prints of the 1780s before his regular use of portrait caricature. Then, as in Argus (1780), National Discourse (1780), and Dutch Divisions (1787), he used national symbols and stereotypes to present his satirical perspective. So here we have Citizen Francois and Britannia rather than, for instance, Buonaparte and Addington.

Gillray carries on the tradition of portraying Frenchmen as thin and foppish, but he also includes elements from his portraits of republican sans-culottes in, for instance, French Liberty - British Slavery (1792). But perhaps most importantly this greasy, disreputable looking citizen, profuse in his flattery, is still wearing a military uniform. So his protestations of "everlasting attachment" are highly suspect.

Britannia takes many forms in Gillray's works, from the classical image seen in Rodney Invested (1782) to the female warrior of Fashion Before Ease. . . (1793) to the almost sick unto death version of Britannia between Death and the Doctor's (1805), but in every other case, she is young and shapely.

In First Kiss, she is clearly not herself. Her helmet, her trident, her shield have all been set aside and, in contrast to Citizen Francois she is dressed as if she were going to a ball. She has become enormously fat and open to flattery, and the clear implication from Gillray is that she is being deceived.

The only hope for Britain is suggested by the pictures on the wall behind Citizen Francois and Britannia. There the two leaders of France and England are in two separate frames. They are NOT shaking hands. And they seem to regard one another with unconcealed suspicion.

Sources and Reading

• Commentary from the British Museum on The First Kiss this Ten Years!.
• Tim Clayton & Sheila O'Connell, Bonaparte and the British, 2015, #48, p. 104.
• Draper Hill, Mr. Gillray The Caricaturist, 1965, p. 127, Pl. 120.
• "Britannia," Wikipedia
• "Treaty of Amiens," Wikipedia
• Thomas Wright and R.H. Evans, Historical and Descriptive Account of the Caricatures of James Gillray #271.
• Thomas Wright and Joseph Grego, The Works of James Gillray, the Caricaturist; With the History of His Life and Times, p. 291.

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