Gillray Caricatures: War with France

Gillray's prints on the subject of war with France date from shortly after the declaration of war on 1 February 1793. In Fatigues of the campaign in Flanders (D13080) Gillray aims his satire at the first campaign in which British soldiers fought those of Revolutionary France, in Flanders. The British army was commanded, at the king's insistence, by the Duke of York, and while the army itself was poorly supplied, its senior officers were able to live a life of relative luxury. Gillray's print shows the Duke of York raising a glass to a plump Dutch woman on his knee. His face is not caricatured, but rendered in the stipple technique used for regular portrait prints; he shares his table with a fat Dutchman representing the Prince of Orange and a fearsome Austrian hussar.

Gillray Caricatures