Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 13.djvu/263



In Cruikshank's later years he made many essays in oil painting. Already, a pleasant tradition affirms, in the early 'Tom and Jerry ' days, he had preluded in the art with a signboard of 'Dusty Bob,' executed for an inn kept at Battle Bridge by Walbourn, a famous actor in one of the numerous plays founded on Egan's novel, and there is moreover at Westminster an actual oil sketch of 'a Cavalier,' which dates as far back as 1820. Ten years later there is another sketch of a 'Pilot Boat going out of Dover Harbour,' a performance in which we may perhaps trace the influence of his friend, Clarkson Stanfield, who is said to have counselled him to quit the needle for the brush. The first picture he exhibited at the Royal Academy was 'Bruce attacked by Assassins.' This was followed in 1830 by a more congenial subject, 'Moses dressing for the Fair' from the 'Vicar of Wakefield.' 'Grimaldi the Clown shaved by a Girl,' 1838; 'Disturbing the Congregation,' which was a commission from the prince consort, 1850; ' A New Situation,' and 'Dressing for the Day,' 1851; 'Tam o' Shanter,' 1852; 'Titania and Bottom the Weaver,' 1853; 'Cinderella' (now at South Kensington), 1854; 'A Runaway Knock,' 1855; 'A Fairy Ring' (a commission from Mr. Henry Miller of Preston, and one of the artist's most successful efforts in this line), 1856; 'The Merry Wives of Windsor,' 1857, are some of the others, all exhibited at the Academy or the British Institution. But his magnum opus in one sense, for it measures 7 feet 8 inches high by 13 feet 3 inches wide, is the huge cartoon crowded with groups and figures which he produced in 1862, with the title of the 'Worship of Bacchus; or, the Drinking Customs of Society.' This, a work of inexhaustible detail and intention, though, as he himself calls it, rather a map than a picture, was intended to be his formal and final protest against intemperance. The original oil painting is in the National Gallery, having been presented to the nation by a committee of subscribers in 1869. An engraving of the picture, all the outlines of the figures being etched by Cruikshank himself, was issued. In 1863 it was exhibited, with some other specimens of his work, in Wellington Street, Strand, and wrote kindly of it in the 'Times.' But though it made the pilgrimage to Windsor for her majesty's inspection, and afterwards the tour of the provinces, the old artist's vogue was gone. Three years of his life had been consumed in this effort, and yet, with all the championship of enthusiastic friends, his gains, from the painting and engraving, amounted to no more than 2,053l. 7s. 6d. One result of his exhibition, however, was the assembling of those etchings and sketches in water-colour and oil which constitute the collection ultimately purchased by the Westminster Aquarium. The catalogue to this contains some useful biographical and explanatory notes by the artist himself; and it may be added, he also drew up, in his most characteristic style, a pamphlet or lecture describing his great temperance cartoon.

In person Cruikshank was a broad-chested, well-built man, rather below the middle height, with a high forehead, blue-grey eyes, a hook nose and a pair of fierce-looking whiskers of a decidedly original pattern. In his younger days he had been an adept at boxing and other manly sports; he was an effective volunteer (being ultimately lieutenant-colonel of the Havelocks, or 48th Middlesex Rifle Volunteers), and he preserved his energy and vitality almost to the last years of his life. Even at eighty he was as ready to dance a hornpipe as to sing his favourite ballad of 'Lord Bateman' 'in character' for the benefit of his friends, and he never tired of dilating upon the advantages of water drinking. Now he would recount how in his green old age he had captured a burglar single-handed; now how he had remained fresh at the end of a long field day simply sustained by an orange. 'He was,' says one who knew him well, 'to sum up, a light-hearted, merry, and, albeit a teetotaler, an essentially "jolly " old gentleman, full physically of humorous action and impulsive gesticulation, imitatively illustrating the anecdotes he related; somewhat dogged in assertion and combative in argument; strong rooted as the oldest of old oaks in old true British prejudices &hellip; but in every word and deed a God-fearing, queen-honouring, truth-loving, honest man.'

In his long life many portraits of him were taken. One of the best known of these is the sketch by Maclise in 'Fraser's Magazine' for August 1833, in which he is shown as a young man seated in a tap-room on a beer barrel, and using the crown of his hat as the desk for some rapid sketch. He often introduced himself in his own designs, e.g. in 'Sketches by Boz,' where he and Dickens figure as stewards at a public dinner. In the 'Triumph of Cupid,' 1845, which forms the frontispiece of the 'Table Book,' he is the central figure, smoking meditatively before his fire with a pet spaniel on his knee. (Smoking, it may be added in parenthesis,