George Cruikshank Biography
George Cruikshank (1792-1878) was an English caricaturist and illustrator, and member of the famous Cruikshank family of illustrators.
Cruikshank's early career was focused on illustrating popular magazines of the times. His drawings often caricatured politicians and famous people of the times.
However, George Cruikshank is best remembered for his illustrations of Dicken's novels which he undertook later in his career. This site features a growing selection of illustrations by George Cruikshank as well as other members of the Cruikshank family.
The 1907 Nuttal Encyclopedia describes George Cruikshank as follows:
Cruikshank, George, a richly gifted English artist, born in London, of Scotch descent; the first exhibition of his talent was in the illustration of books for children, but it was in the line of humorous satire he chiefly distinguished himself; and he first found scope for his gifts in this direction in the political squibs of William Hone, a faculty he exercised at length over a wide area; the works illustrated by him include, among hundreds of others, "Grimm's Stories," "Peter Schlemihl," Scott's "Demonology," Dickens's "Oliver Twist," and Ainsworth's "Jack Shepherd"; like Hogarth, he was a moralist as well as an artist, and as a total abstainer he consecrated his art at length to dramatise the fearful downward career of the drunkard; his greatest work, done in oil, is in the National Gallery, the "Worship of Bacchus," which is a vigorous protestation against this vice (1792-1878).
