CRUIKSHANK, GEORGE (1792-1878), English artist, caricaturist and illustrator, was born in London, Sept. 27, 1792. By natural disposition and collateral circumstances he may be accepted as the type of the born humoristic artist. His grand father had taken up the arts, and his father, Isaac Cruikshank, was a painter. The contemporary of Gillray, Rowlandson, Alken, Heath, Dighton, and the established caricaturists of that genera tion, George developed great proficiency as an etcher. Gillray's matured and trained skill had some influence upon his executive powers. Prolific and dexterous beyond his competitors, for a generation Cruikshank delineated Tories, Whigs and Radicals with fine impartiality. Satirical capital came to him from every public event—wars abroad, the enemies of England (for he was always fervidly patriotic), the camp, the court, the senate, the church; low life, high life; the humours of the people, the follies of the great. George Cruikshank's technical and manipulative skill as an etcher was such that Ruskin placed his productions in the fore most rank. He died at 263, Hampstead road, London, on Feb. 1, 1878, and was buried in St. Paul's cathedral.
A vast number of Cruikshank's spirited cartoons were pub lished as separate caricatures, all coloured by hand ; others formed series, or were contributed to satirical magazines, the Satirist, Town Talk, The Scourge (1811-16) and the like ephemeral pub lications. In conjunction with William Hone, G. Cruikshank pro duced political satires, The Political House that Jack Built (1819), and others, re-issued by Hone in 1827 under the general title, Facetiae and Miscellanies.
Of a more genially humoristic order are his famed book illus trations. Early in this series came The Humorist (1819-21) and Life in Paris (1822), the well-known series of Life in London, con jointly produced by the brothers I. R. and G. Cruikshank, and Grimm's Collection of German Popular Stories (1824-26), in two series, with 22 inimitable etchings. To the first 14 volumes of Bentley's Miscellany, Cruikshank contributed 126 of his best plates, etched on steel, including the famous illustra tions to Oliver Twist, Jack Sheppard, Guy Fawkes and The In goldsby Legends. For W. Harrison Ainsworth, Cruikshank illus trated Rookwood (1836), and The Tower of London (1840). For C. Lever's Arthur O'Leary he supplied ten full-page etchings (1844), and 20 spirited graphic etchings for Maxwell's lurid History of the Irish Rebellion in 1798 (1845). The best known of the pictures and illustrations produced by Cruikshank as an en thusiastic advocate of abstinence are The Bottles, 8 plates (1847), with its sequel, The Drunkard's Children, 8 plates (1848), with the ambitious work, The Worship of Bacchus, published by sub scription after the artist's oil painting, now in the National Gal lery, London, to which it was presented by his numerous admirers.
See Cruikshank's with introduction by Joseph Grego (1903).