Cynicus

Martin Anderson, (1854 – 14 April 1932), better known by his pseudonym Cynicus, was a Scottish artist,[1] political cartoonist, postcard illustrator, and publisher.

In 1879, age 24, he decided to move to London, ("to study art proper" he explained in an 1894 interview in The Sketch).

In 1881, as a freelance artist, he began contributing cartoons and illustrations to the comic weekly The Quiz, an imitation of the magazine Punch.

In 1891, he moved back to London in an attempt to get his work noticed, taking a shop in Drury Lane, with the sign "Cynicus Publishing Company" over its door and with prints of his cartoons displayed in its windows.

[3] In 1891, he began contributing work to the Pall Mall Budget, as well as to The Idler and Ariel or the London Puck, yet another rival to Punch.

[4] A second book, titled The Humours of Cynicus, again containing many reworked The Quiz cartoons, was partwork published starting in September 1891.

The outbreak of war put an end to the seaside postcard market in Britain, and Cynicus Art Publishing Company was forced to close.

The printing plates for his postcards were sent from Leeds – but for uncertain reasons, and without the knowledge of Andersen, they were sold for scrap.

: in a pyramidal composition, a crowned Mammon sits on a throne, tossing away the Nation's wealth to an ecstatic crowd clutching sacks marked "War Profits"; a semi-naked Lust caresses him, famine and disease sit at her feet; Justice and Parliament stand bound and gagged; the Lamp of Truth is extinguished by censorship; the Church encourages the slaughter.

[6] This poster was displayed in his shop window until he was warned he could be interned without trial under the terms of the Defence of the Realm Act (DORA).

In another allegorical poster titled The Dictator, produced after the end of the war, soldiers returning home are greeted by a fat figure representing Capitalism, seated on a huge sack full of the earnings of others, using a megaphone titled "The Press" to blast out "Propaganda and Misrepresentation" and setting his "Black and Tan" dog onto Ireland; the grave of Liberty and Freedom is trampled over by a truncheon-welding policeman titled DORA; two more fat figures, representing Lloyd George (standing on broken pledges) and the Church, carry a banner titled "Britain's welcome to the Troops" that frames the entrance to a poorhouse.