http://worldcat.org/entity/work/id/16573945

John Tenniel, cartoonist : a critical & sociocultural study in the art of the Victorian political cartoon

John Tenniel's cartoons occupied a place between journalistic and "high" art in the eyes of his countrymen. This study examines Tenniel's drawings for Punch from 1850 to early 1901 in relation to the cultural ambience of the period and to some of its social concerns. Chapter I gives insights into those facets of Tenniel's experience and personality which contributed to the piquant blend of mockery and grandeur in his work. The purpose of Chapter II is to examine the comic, the grotesque, and the artistic aspects of Tenniel's art. The cartoons were enhanced by the subtle introduction of caricatural elements which were both form-creative and aesthetic. Some, by their heroic character, filled the void created by the lack of a state-sponsored didactic and patriotic art program in England. Amended in this section are the many erroneous statements which have been made during this century regarding Tenniel as a draftsman on wood. Chapter III relates Tenniel's drawings to specific categories of Victorian painting and sculpture. Chapter IV, which constitutes the second part of this essentially two-part study deals with the iconographies generated by the working-class movement in England and by Irish disaffection. These subjects were selected for what they might reveal about Victorian people. The vehemence of the Punch cartoons toward the dissident Irish, a group which was formed largely of the peasant or working classes, provoked this inquiry into how Tenniel had dealt with the English working man. The investigation proved to be rich in images common to cartoons, paintings, prints, novels, and the stage. The persistent motif of the shillelagh brawl in the Irish cartoons disclosed a linkage between the apprehensions with which the affluent classes in England regarded their own working classes and their attitudes toward the Irish. The final chapter discusses the influence of the cartoons, the interest with which they were followed nationally and abroad, and the plagiarizing of Tenniel's drawings by other papers. Their continued reproduction in studies of the Victorian years attests to Tenniel's success in encapsulating the Victorian self image.

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