Colin Seymour-Ure, Edited by Mark Bryant
The picture politics of Sir Francis Carruthers Gould:
Britain’s pioneering political cartoonist
Foreword by Lord Baker of Dorking, Manchester University Press 2024, 224pp many ill hb £85, ISBN 978-1-5261-8200-5 / 9781526181992
Robin Simon
Sir Francis Carruthers Gould (1844–1925), the subject of this most enjoyable and rewarding book published to mark the centenary of his death, is one of the forgotten knights of British art. Much of that must be due to the fact that he was a political cartoonist – a medium peculiarly evanescent. He is probably not ‘the most completely forgotten’ British artist of all, however, for that dubious palm is surely claimed by his knightly predecessor, Sir John Gilbert (1817–1897), who, staggeringly, was described in 1857 as ‘the most widely known artist in the world’. Gilbert was a wood engraver and, once you know that he worked for the Illustrated London News – again, a fleeting publication – you realise that the term ‘most widely known artist’ was in no way a measure of his artistic genius.
1 Our National Church the Aegis of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity by Sir Francis Carruthers Gould (1844–1925), 1883. According to Gordon E Flaws, this issue was ‘reconstructed, revised, and brought down to date [with]… the pencil of Mr. F.C. Gould to invest with artistic merit my dry bones of design’
Gould, however – deft of hand and so witty – certainly deserved to be resurrected. I was astonished to find that, all-unknowing, I had grown up with a print by him – it is now in my hall at home – that still features in many a High Church house and institution: Our National Church (there is a copy on the walls of Pusey House, Oxford, for example) (Pl 1). His was an easy-going kind of satire and rightly he said, ‘I etch with vinegar, not vitriol.’ As a result, many of his subjects – ‘victims’ would be too harsh – liked his images of them, and they liked him too. Lord Rosebery, for instance, was a frequent target (Pl 2), even though Gould, like Rosebery, was a Liberal – and obviously so.
2 Archibald Philip Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery, and Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman as Tweedledum and Tweedledee by Sir Francis Carruthers Gould (1844–1925), ?1904. Pen and ink 13.4 x 15.2 cm. British Museum. Perhaps an illustration to Charles Geake’s John Bull’s Adventures in Fiscal Wonderland, 1904, for which Gould provided 46 illustrations
When that party won a landslide victory in 1906 it ensured that Gould was knighted the same year, for Rosebery and his colleagues had seen Gould as one of their few effective political weapons during the gloomy years in opposition. His political enemies too, notably Unionists such as Sir Edward Carson, collected his work. When they, in turn, were long in opposition after 1906 three of them, Bonar Law, FE Smith and Carson, were happy to sign Gould’s original drawing for The Westminster Gazette of 9 October 1912 (Pl 3).
3 Waiting for the Home Rule Bill: Bonar Law, FE Smith and Carson by Sir Francis Carruthers Gould (1844–1925). Original drawing for The Westminster Gazette of 9 October 1912 signed by the ‘victims’
This delightful book was left unfinished at Colin Seymour-Ure’s untimely death, and Mark Bryant has done a superb job in bringing it to print. It forms a splendid tribute both to Gould’s champion and the artist himself – who will now surely find many modern admirers.