Life in London

Cruikshank was sketching London during a time of unprecedented industrial expansion and the rise of mass culture. London’s population doubled in the first fifty years of the nineteenth century and, at the same time, the United Kingdom was experiencing a wave of rapid economic growth precipitated by relatively peaceful relations with other European powers, a period known as Pax Britannica.

Many of the caricatures and illustrations that Cruikshank engraved were based on the styles and forms that he was interpreting while living in the vibrant and changing city. By exaggerating bodily features and forms, Cruikshank attempted to underscore the themes of his work, sometimes in offensive ways, especially regarding race and ethnicity. 

Despite Cruikshank’s problematic Victorian depictions of race, nationality, and bodily forms, the aim of most caricaturists during Cruikshank’s time was primarily to “hold the the powerful to account” through visual exaggeration, as Ian Haywhood observers, rather than to “to mock those social groups who are already disenfranchised and disempowered” (Further Reading).  

This section of the exhibition features Cruikshank’s portrayals of common people and everyday life in the city of London spanning from the Regency to the Victorian period. The works are organized into two collections: “Class Stratification” and “Out and About.” The “Class Stratification” collection examines George Cruickshank’s portrayals of everyday life in London through the lens of the intense class disparities that divided the city’s majority working and middle class inhabitants from its smaller ruling class, comprised mainly of the nation’s upwardly mobile bourgeoisie and its waning aristocracy. The “Out and About” collection explores common depictions of London’s people engaging in the typical urban activities of the Regency and Victorian ages.

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Click on the collection links to learn more.