For many of us, the first thing that comes to mind for ‘cartoon’ is a joke, a comic take, nothing serious… but the Cartoon Museum in London makes it clear how serious a business and art cartooning can be.
Which is not to say, however, that it has no sense of humor—it merely wants us to understand that cartoons, even when amusing, can have serious social impact, marshalling rage against injustice, pointing out emperors with no clothes, evoking sympathy for the down-trodden or calling a nation to take arms.
It starts with the story of the first cartoon (in the sense we use it, not as an artist’s sketch for a painting). “In the beginning,” the sign says, “was the image (since God hadn’t invented reading yet).” That cartoon, published in the British magazine Punch in 1843, was called “Substance and Shadow.” In it, John Leech shows the wretched poor of Victorian London in a gallery filled with portraits of their ‘betters’ in fancy dress and uniform.
That kind of contrast—substance and shadow, official story and reality, public morality and private depravity—mark many of the cartoons both in the museum and in any good collection of political art. In the age of the Epstein files, some of them seem even more timely.
Times change, and cartoons with them; note the very different view of Queen Elizabeth in an ‘obituary cartoon’ from 2022. Below it, a 2024 response to a proposal for returning mandatory national service and its contrast with the 1940 cartoon below it.
Wartime cartoons, especially those caricaturing the enemy, helped build unity and determination to win the war.
This 1939 David Low cartoon commenting on the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact became so famous that its intent was instantly recognizable 80 years later when another cartoonist updated it.
Another wartime use of cartoons…
But the museum reminds us that cartoons aren’t always super-direct in poking fun at our ways or reminding us of possibly less-serious (or possibly-not) injustices.
Changing styles can be seen over the years; detailed engravings giving way in many cases to looser styles, and more recently to freer use of color.
The French painter, Honore Daumier, was best-known in his time as a cartoonist and caricaturist; here he chronicles the fall in esteem of Louis Phillippe, a king who promised reform and an end to censorship. That didn’t last long after an unflattering 1831 cartoon of the king, which landed Daumier in jail. Released in 1833, he continued to lampoon the monarch. Another well-known French artist, Theodore Steinlen, created the cartoon below to rally anti-German sentiment in World War I.
With all its exhibits on the history and seriousness of cartoons, the museum doesn’t ignore the merely amusing and other ‘lesser’ genres—and each of those tells us something serious in a way, too. It’s easy to be amused by Andy Capp, and hard not to see it as a real social comment. Comic strips, and ultimately comic books, were a mid-Victorian development, originally aimed only at children. As if.
A special exhibit at the museum when I visited focused on cartoon visions of the future, science fiction in cartoon form, essentially. It’s a pretty rich history, and full of familiar names and characters.
None of those, however, have the innocent charm of these 1890s French postcards imagining the world in 2000—oh, my, that’s the past now, isn’t it!
At the Museum’s gift shop—no museum’s complete without one!—there are plenty of books and other merch, as well as these three-dimensional cartoons of the current king.
And a last bit of whimsy at the loo. Note the door labels. The sign above the noise-canceling headphones reads “No paper towels. Only loud hand dryer. Ear defenders if needed.”
Very interesting and timely article.