A Democrat _ or _ Reason & Philosophy, James Gillray Engraving

James Gillray was the creator of the modern political cartoon. He lived above Humphrey’s, the London print shop that sold his work. His subjects were social, political and ideological and his satire was generally anti- democratic.

James Gillray depicts Charles James Fox (1749 – 1806) in this political caricature. Charles became a distinguished Whig statesman and a hero of liberty, as opposed to other statesmen who were considered loyalist. In this depiction the satirist Gillray portrays Fox as a bloodstained, lower class extreme French revolutionary, linked by association with Parisian violence, suggested here as the inevitable consequence of the principles of the Enlightenment, of democracy and rationalism. Unshaven, hairy, animal-like, drunk, farting, and without pants, his hands are bloodstained, as is his dagger, as he wears the Cap of Liberty, with the tri-colored French Cockade and exclaims, a song of the French Revolution,Ca ira! A Democrat _ or _ Reason & Philosophy measures 16.00 inches H X 11.25 inches W X 00.75 inches D, including the frame.