Isaac Cruikshank
Isaac Cruikshank ( born October 5, 1764 in Edinburgh, † April 1811 in London) was a Scottish watercolor painter and caricaturist. He was the father of the well -known artist Robert and George Cruikshank.
Curriculum vitae
The parents of Isaac Cruikshank were Elizabeth Davidson ( * ca 1725) and Andrew Crookshanks (ca. 1725 - ca 1783), a former customs inspector, who had been dismissed for his involvement in the Second Jacobite Rising in 1745. Isaac Cruikshank studied with a local artist, probably John Kay (1742-1826), and traveled with his teacher in 1783 to London. There he married in 1788 Mary MacNaughton ( 1769-1853 ); the couple had five children, two of whom died early. A daughter, Margaret Eliza, was also a promising young artist, but died at the age of 18 years.
Cruikshank first known publications were etchings of Edinburgh 1784 "types". He even put the plates forth by its pencil drawings, his wife she colored. He illustrated books about the theater, manufactured the cover of the book witticisms and jests of Dr Johnson ( 1791) and illustrated George Shaw's General Zoology detailed ( 1800-1826 ). His watercolors have been exhibited in the Royal Academy, but prints and drawings were more lucrative. He responded to the Zeitgeist, but was consistent in his dislike of Napoleon Bonaparte and political radicals. Together with James Gillray, he developed a figure of John Bull, the national personification of the UK.
Isaac Cruikshank was a contemporary of James Gillray and Thomas Rowlandson and thus belonged to the golden era of British caricature. Some critics describe his work as " mixed ", but it offers a vibrant display of cultural and political issues in Britain at the turn of the 18th to the 19th century.
Cruikshank died at the age of 55 years. There are given different reasons of his death: the consequences of a betting drunkenness, Turberkulose or flu.
His works are found today mainly in the British Museum in London, in the Huntington Library in California and in the Houghton Library at Harvard University.