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This list includes both British born artists and those who were born elsewhere but did most of their most important creations in the U.K. The selection is listed in chronological order by date of birth.

Max Beerbohm ( 1872 – 1956 )

Sir Henry Maximilian “Max” Beerbohm was born in London, son of a well-to-do Lithuanian-born grain merchant. His family gave him he nick-name of Max and that is what he signed himself in his work and was known as for the rest of his life.

Beerbohm was educated at Charterhouse School and Merton College, Oxford but left without taking a degree as he was already well recognized as a caricaturist and humourist.

He had an incapacity to draw hands and feet but was very good at heads and his dandified figures with inflated heads quickly became his trade-mark. The Times newspaper in 1913 described him as ?the greatest of English comic artists and he was variously hailed as ?the English Goya? and “the greatest portrayer of personalities in the history of art?

Henry Bateman (1887 ? 1970)

Bateman was born in New South Wales, Australia of English parents who returned to England soon after he was born. He studied art at Westminster School of Art and the Goldsmith Institute.

His style matured early in life and by the age of 17 it was already established. He achieved a contract with Tatler magazine but is best well-known for his ?The Man Who??.? series of cartoons. These showed hapless people who had committed mostly upper class social faux pas. ?The Man Who lit his Cigar before the Loyal Toast? is a prime instance.

Sir David Low (1891 – 1963)

Sir David Alexander Cecil Low was born in New Zealand and taught at Dunedin and Christchurch. He began his professional life in New Zealand and in fact his first effort was published while he was only 11 years of age.

He later moved to Australia and subsequently to England and by 1927 was working for The Evening Standard. He is best well-known for his caricatures depicting Hitler and Mussolini both before and during World War II. In fact, generations of New Zealand school children learned about the origins of the Second World War using textbooks illustrated by Low.

He was especially hated by Hitler and after the war it was uncovered that his name was in the ?Black Book? which listed those who the Nazis wanted to arrest after they had conquered Britain.

Low was knighted in 1962, a year before his death. His obituary described him as “the leading cartoonist of the western world”

Ronald Searle (b. 1920)

Ronald William Fordham Searle was born in Cambridge and began drawing at the surprisingly early age of five and was working professionally by the age of 15. The War interrupted his art studies and he enlisted in the Royal Engineers .

He was serving in Singapore when he was captured by the Japanese. He was a prisoner of war for the remainder of the war eventually working on the infamous Siam-Burma ?Death Railway?. He produced, in secret, many drawings depicting conditions in the camps which survived detection by being concealed under the mattresses of dying prisoners.

He returned to England at the end of the war and produced a prodigious volume of work in the 1950?s and 60?s. However he is best known as the originator of ?St Trinians School?.

Gerald Scarfe (b. 1936)

Gerald Anthony Scarfe was born in London and as a child was severely asthmatic. During his early bed-ridden years he busied himself by drawing. He began his working life in advertising but by the early 60?s his caricatures were appearing in ?Private Eye? and this led to a job with the ?Daily Mail?.

But it was his effort with the British rock group Pink Floyd for which he is most known especially the illustration for the cover of their 1979 album ?The Wall?.

Searle also provided the caricatures for the opening and closing sequences of the well-liked BBC comedy ?Yes Minister? and in 1998 he drew caricatures of Tommy Cooper, Eric Morecombe, Joyce Grenfell, Les Dawson and Peter Cook which were shown on a set of five British postage stamps celebrating British comedians.

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A caricature is a portrait, painting or cartoon that exaggerates or distorts a number of features of a person or item to create an easily identifiable visual likeness.

Caricatures can be discourteous or flattering and can serve a political point or be drawn simply for entertainment. Caricatures of politicians are frequently used in editorial cartoons, whilst caricatures of movie stars are often found in entertainment magazines.

The word is derived from the Italian caricare- to charge or load. Thus, the word “caricature” essentially means a “loaded portrait”. Strictly speaking , the term refers only to depictions of real-life people, and not to cartoon fabrications of fictional characters.

However the world-renowned animator Walt Disney claimed that his animation work could be compared with caricature, saying the hardest thing to do was find the caricature of an animal that worked best as a human-like character.

One of the earliest instances of a caricature has been discovered in the ruins of Pompeii where a graffiti caricature of a politician had been carved on a wall.

Moving forward nearly 1500 years but staying in Italy, Leonardo da Vinci was an active exponent of the art. He actually sought out people with some form of deformity to use as models.

The purpose of a caricature was to offer an impression of the original which was more striking than a portrait. Diodemmar Casem, one of the great early exponents, claimed to be able to sum up a person in ? three or four strokes of the pen?.

Caricature underwent its first successes in the closed aristocratic circles of France and Italy, where such portraits would be passed about for mutual enjoyment.

Mary Darley was one of the first professional caricaturists in England and about 1762 published the first book of caricature drawing in England – A Book of Caricaturas

However, the two greatest exponents of the art of the caricature in the 18th century were Thomas Rowlandson and James Gillray. Their styles of output were in great contrast. Rowlandson was the more artistic of the two and took his inspiration from the public at large.

Gillray, on the other hand, was more interested in the political arena and used his art to satirize political life. Being contemporaries they became big friends and used to spend a lot of time getting drunk in the pubs of London.

In drawing a caricature the caricaturist can select to either gently mock or cruelly wound his subject. Drawing caricatures can merely be a variety of entertainment and amusement – in which case gentle mockery is in order – or the art can be employed to make a significant social or political point.

A caricaturist draws on (1) the natural characteristics of the topic (the big ears, long nose, etc.); (2) the acquired individuality (stoop, scars, facial lines etc.); and (3) the vanities (choice of hair style, glasses, garments, expressions and mannerisms).

Although caricaturists like Gillray raised a lot of debate in the 18th century by their portrayal of the Royal family and particularly George III, it was nothing compared to the present day uproar in the Muslim world brought about by cartoons caricaturing the prophet Mohammed. So the contemporary day caricaturist continues in the satirical mode of his illustrious antecedents.

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In all probability the first name that springs to mind when thinking of the history of cartoons is that of Punch.

It was a British weekly magazine of humour and satire published between 1841 and 1992. It was started in July 1841 by Henry Mayhew who, with Mark Lemon, was responsible for the editing, and engraver Ebenezer Landells who took care of the illustrations.

Its initial sub-title was The London Charivari, after a French satirical humour publication known as Le Charivari. Revealing their satiric and humorous intent, the two editors took the name of the anarchic glove puppet, Mr. Punch, of Punch and Judy fame as the title of the new publication.

On the other hand the name is also a play on words regarding the name of the co-editor Mark Lemon, in that “punch is nothing without lemon”. Mayhew did not stick with the publication for long. He ceased being joint editor in 1842 and became “suggestor in chief” until he departed in 1845.

Punch was responsible for the word “cartoon” in the sense of a comic drawing. In fact one of its most famous cartoons, drawn by George Du Maurier, the grandfather of the novelist Dame Daphne Du Maurier , gave birth to the expression ?it is good in parts, like the curate?s egg?. The phrase derives from a cartoon entitled “True Humility”.

It pictured a nervous-looking curate taking breakfast in his bishop’s house.The bishop says, “I’m afraid you’ve got a bad egg, Mr Jones.” The curate replies, “Oh, no, my Lord, I assure you that parts of it are excellent!”

Yet probably its most well-known cartoon is entitled ? Dropping the Pilot? . This was a political cartoon by Sir John Tenniel, first published in March 1890. It depicts the German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, as a shipping pilot, stepping off a ship watched by the German Emperor Wilhelm II. Bismarck had recently resigned as Chancellor at Wilhelm’s insistence.

After a very problematic start with much financial trouble and lack of market success, Punch became a necessity for British middle class drawing rooms because it not just displayed a sophisticated sense of humour and but lacked the rude material so prevalent in much of the alternative satirical press of the time.

The Times used small parts from Punch as column fillers, giving the publication free publicity and indirectly conferring a degree of respectability, However respectability was truly achieved when it was learned that Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were to be discovered amongst it readership.

The circulation of Punch peaked during the 1940s at 175,000 but thereafter fell into deterioration, until in 1992 ,after 150 years the magazine was forced to close.

In 1996, the Egyptian businessman Mohamed Al-Fayed became tired of the numerous criticisms he had to endure from the publication Private Eye and bought the rights to the Punch name with a view to using it to combat his antagonist. He relaunched it later that year, but it never achieved any degree of circulation or profitability and in May 2002 it was declared that Punch would at long last close for good

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