The late competition for Cartoons must cause some alteration in the next
edition of Johnson's Dictionary; for what is meant by the word Cartoon
will require considerable explanation, after the very extraordinary
collection recently exhibited at Westminster. According to some of the
artists, Cartoon signifies anything brought in a cart; for such is the
only claim to be called a Cartoon that many of the specimens can pretend
to. Chalking walls used formerly to be a very profitable employment; and
we have often thought what could have become of the wall-chalkers since
the blacking-makers ceased to have their Day—and Martin. These artists
of a menial capacity (_vide_ the Latin Dictionary for the meaning of
_mœnial_) came out in considerable strength at the late exhibition of
Cartoons, and they have chalked up a pretty long account against
themselves on the walls of Westminster. That the exhibition was put an
end to rather summarily at the beginning of autumn, we are not
surprised; it is only astonishing that they were not made to "walk their
chalks" at a much earlier period.
The Commissioners of the fine arts shot at a pigeon, and killed a crow.
They wished to ascertain the state of the art of historical painting,
and got a glorious collection of designs for burlesquing British
history, showing at once the palmy state to which the art of caricature
has risen in this country. Fauns have been satirized, and the British
lion has been made in the mane a very humorous-looking animal. As to
Magna Carta, never did it give rise to such tremendous liberties as the
drawers of the Cartoons have taken with it. Shakspeare is fortunately
immortal, or his fame could scarcely have escaped the violent hands that
have been laid upon him. Macbeth and the Witches are so beautifully
confused that it is difficult to say which is Macbeth and which the
Witches. There is the murder of Duncan, with his two sons in the
distance, looking on as calmly as if they were indeed very distant
relatives. There is the Ghost of Cæsar appearing to Brutus; but the
artist, not knowing how to treat light and shade, has caricatured the
shade most miserably. Some have selected Shakspeare upon Mercy for
illustration, but without having any mercy upon Shakspeare; and somebody
has favoured us with Drake on the quarter-deck, Drake being
distinguished by a pair of ducks,—a touch of humour we could not fail to
appreciate. Most of the artists seemed to have laboured under an awful
enlargement of the imagination, which set them off commencing their
drawings upon an enormous scale, obliging them to moderate their
conceptions before the completion of the picture. The fact that there
was many a Cartoon which would have gone in, but that there was no
getting it through the door, illustrates this malady among the artists.
It may be considered as a species of Elephantiasis, inducing the idea
that one's self and one's subject are much more vast than they are in
reality. It would seem that some of the artists have misread the
advertisement of the Commissioners of Fine Arts, and that for the word
"decorate" some of them read "desecrate" the walls of Parliament.