Exhibition Introduction
Exhibition Introduction
The exhibition 'Beyond the Irony: a Reevaluation of James Gillray's Design for Naval Pillar' revolves around James Gillray's print Design for Naval Pillar. Published in 1800, the print was a mock public ‘submission’ to the Duke of Clarence’s ‘Naval Pillar or Monument Project.’ Upon first inspection, the viewer is overwhelmed with an almost propagandistic print emphasizing the English naval achievements over France. However, closer investigation of the pillar reveals symbols that suggest an alternative purpose dedicated to criticizing the French while simultaneously critiquing the British government. This exhibition is designed to illuminate the subtle critique made by Gillray, that has been ignored by previous scholarship, through four components of the pillar: Britannia atop the pillar, the bonnet-rouge, the British Jack Tar and Justice’s unbalanced scales. By connecting these motifs to images in Gillray’s larger oeuvre, the true meaning of them become apparent. The goal of this exhibition is to introduce the viewer to such meanings by comparing sections of the pillar with Gillray’s previous work.
The exhibition begins with a brief biography of James Gillray and is followed by a introduction to the Duke of Clarence’s ‘Naval Pillar or Monument Project’—the event which Design from Naval Pillar stemmed from. The next section is an introduction to Gillray’s pillar as a whole, dedicated to illuminating his motive behind constructing the print. The main portion of the exhibition is the breakdown of the pillar’s motifs and the distribution of his prints. Five essays—expanding on issues addressed here—are composed to support the pillar’s dual purpose.
Beginning from the top of the pillar and working down, the first essay is entitled “Withering Britannia” and focuses on Britannia at the summit as a weakened figure. Despite the fact that she appears as an authoritative figure in Design for Naval Pillar, her diminishing power and withering appearance in other prints by Gillray render her as a figure reigning over chaos, as opposed to a united government. This section is accompanied by nine prints, created both before and after Design, where Gillray has constructed Britannia is a dilapidated state.
“Charles James Fox and the Bonnet-Rouge” revolves around the red, “Liberté” inscribed bonnet-rouge symbolizing Whig politician Charles James Fox. Due to Fox’s close political ties with French government officials the British people considered him a French sympathizer. Gillray therefore began depicting him in numerous prints wearing the bonnet-rouge—a notorious symbol of the French Revolution. This section includes twenty prints done by Gillray where Fox is either wearing the bonnet-rouge, or is connected to the French in some manner. This section also includes five prints by three contemporaries of Gillray where Fox portrayed in the bonnet-rouge to express how other artists adopted Gillray’s motif.
“The British Jack Tar” focuses on the stripped-pants figures in the middle of the pillar, which can arguably be identified as a British Jack Tar. The essay begins with tracking the evolution of the term ‘Jack Tar.’ It continues by identifying the Jack Tar in the pillar as the Duke of Clarence from a previous caricature done by Gillray. This section includes William Hogarth’s print The Invasion Plate 1: France, the first appearance of the Jack Tar in prints, and Carington Bowles The True British Tar as a comparison for how other artists of the time rendered the Jack Tar.
“The Unbalanced Scales of Justice” looks into the figure of Justice at the base of the pillar. Here the unbalanced scales of Justice are used to symbolize the corrupt nature of the British government. Although they have successfully defeated the French, the British still have issues within its governmental systems and the treatment of its people. This page features seven other prints where Gillray has used the scales to connote British governmental inequality.
The final section “Hannah Humphrey and the Distribution of Prints” looks into Gillray’s main publisher and how his prints would have been exposed to the general British public. Due to Hannah Humphrey’s involvement, Gillray’s prints were elevated to such a high status that even those whom he caricaturized bought his prints from Humphrey’s shop. The purpose of this section is to show how the British public of the late 18th century would have been familiar with Gillray’s prints prior to the publishing of Design for Naval Pillar and therefore would have recognized a motif in the pillar such as the bonnet-rouge as a symbol for Charles James Fox.
‘Beyond the Irony’ also features a timeline tracking the evolution of Gillray’s prints featuring Charles James Fox and the bonnet-rouge to provide a visualization of the vast number that were published prior to Design for Naval Pillar. An index of political figures, correlated to the tags in all featured prints, is also included. This page gives a list, alphabetically by last name, to all figures mentioned in the prints with a link to their Wikipedia page.
Overall, the exhibition presents a deeper look into multiple sections of the pillar, and Gillray’s print production as a whole, to emphasize the re-reading of it as a fictive monument highlighting the instability of the British government.