William Hogarth

In England, William Hogarth was the "most important making of satirical prints in the first half the the 18th Century." Like most of the satire of his time, his prints were often social commentary. The image above is an engraving of John Wilkes, a radical, journalist, and politician that Hogarth obviously didn't care for. Very rarely did he apply his satire to politics. The bottom image is an example of Hogarth's more political cartoons. It pertains to the South Sea Bubble scandal (which to sum it up quickly involved over-speculation on trade to cause people to loose a lot of money.)

Introduction to English Satire

Caricature began to evolve with the invention of the printing press in the 15th century. Satire lent itself to prints well because with print there is the capability to create relatively inexpensive art that could be passed around, studied closely, and hidden when necessary. These early prints relied more on allegory then actual caricature, and very early subjects were often about religion. The 18th Century is when caricature's popularity really began to grown in England. There "caricature" was used as a broad term that covered any satirical print. In England, the graphic skills of Italian caricature artists were combined with social content from realist Dutch paintings to form a media that resembles modern day cartoons.

(Image above: William Hogarth)