James Gillray — an English painter and engraver, caricaturist, threatened to be hanged by Napoleon I Bonaparte. Gillray and William Hogarth are considered fathers of the British political and social caricature.

Gillray was born in 1757 in the London suburb of Chelsea. As a child he learnt to engrave type font, in his teenage years he spent some time with a travelling circus and then returned to London and studied drawing in the Royal Academy of Fine Arts. He tried to make a living doing portrait prints and signed most of his works in that period with aliases. Gillray created his first caricature ‘Paddy on Horseback’ in 1779. He became famous in 1782. At that time he practically fully switched to caricature and met publisher Hanna Humphrey. She arranged the sale of Gillray’s art in her shops, displayed them in best show-cases and later rented out his albums.

Gillray used the techniques of print, aquatint and stippling — a dotted technique used for engraving metal parts of arms. This technique creates an image using groups of dots — they intersect and blend on a metal sheet creating volume and gradation of tone. The stippling was made with needles, graver and mattoir — a tool similar to a spiked stamp. The artist used these tools to make an image on the surface of a board or a layer of acid-proof varnish. The technique was one of the most popular ones in England in late XVIII century and Gillray used is it colored caricatures. Such board was convenient for applying colored paints with a tampo — the artist repeated the procedure before each new print.

In 1806 Gillray’s eyesight worsened dramatically. Glasses did not help. Having lost his ability to work at the same quality level, Gillray fell into depression and started drinking. He made the last print in 1811. James Gillray died in 1815 and was buried in Piccadilly.