James Gillray (13 August 1756[1][2] – 1 June 1815) was a British caricaturist and printmaker famous for his etched political and social satires, mainly published between 1792 and 1810.

Gillray has been called "the father of the political cartoon", with his works satirizing George III, Napoleon, prime ministers and generals.

[3] Regarded as one of the two most influential cartoonists, the other being William Hogarth, Gillray's wit and humour, knowledge of life, fertility of resource, keen sense of the ludicrous, and beauty of execution, at once gave him the first place among caricaturists.

His father had served as a soldier; he had lost an arm at the Battle of Fontenoy in 1745 and was admitted, first as an inmate and subsequently as an outdoor pensioner, at Chelsea Hospital.

After a chequered experience, he returned to London and was admitted as a student in the Royal Academy, supporting himself by engraving, and probably issuing a considerable number of caricatures under fictitious names.

It is believed that he several times thought of marrying her, and that on one occasion the pair were on their way to the church, when Gillray said: "This is a foolish affair, methinks, Miss Humphrey.

Gillray lapsed into insanity and was looked after by Hannah Humphrey until his death on 1 June 1815 in London; he was buried in St James's churchyard, Piccadilly.

Gillray revenged himself for this utterance by his caricature entitled A Connoisseur Examining a Cooper, which he is doing by means of a candle on a "save-all", so that the sketch satirises at once the king's pretensions to knowledge of art and his miserly habits.

Gillray's incomparable wit and humour, knowledge of life, fertility of resource, keen sense of the ludicrous, and beauty of execution, at once gave him the first place among caricaturists.

The ideas embodied in some of them are sublime and poetically magnificent in their intensity of meaning, while the forthrightness — which some have called coarseness — which others display is characteristic of the general freedom of treatment common in all intellectual departments in the 18th century.

The great tact Gillray displays in hitting on the ludicrous side of any subject is only equalled by the exquisite finish of his sketches—the finest of which reach an epic grandeur and Miltonic sublimity of conception.

[4] Other political caricatures include: Britannia between Scylla and Charybdis, a picture in which Pitt, so often Gillray's butt, figures in a favourable light; The Bridal Night; The Apotheosis of Hoche, which concentrates the excesses of the French Revolution in one view; The Nursery with Britannia reposing in Peace; The First Kiss these Ten Years (1803), another satire on the peace, which is said to have greatly amused Napoleon; The Hand-Writing upon the Wall; The Confederated Coalition, a swipe at the coalition which superseded the Addington ministry; Uncorking Old Sherry; The Plumb-pudding in danger (probably the best known political print ever published); Making Decent; Comforts of a Bed of Roses; View of the Hustings in Covent Garden; Phaethon Alarmed; and Pandora opening her Box.

This was a devastating image aimed at the ridiculous sycophancy directed by the press towards Frederica Charlotte Ulrica, Duchess of York, and the supposed daintiness of her feet.

Among the finest are: Shakespeare Sacrificed; Two-Penny Whist (which features an image of Hannah Humphrey); Oh that this too solid flesh would melt; Sandwich-Carrots; The Gout; Comfort to the Corns; Begone Dull Care; The Cow-Pock, which gives humorous expression to the popular dread of vaccination; Dilletanti Theatricals; and Harmony before Matrimony and Matrimonial Harmonics—two sketches in violent contrast to each other.

Professor David Taylor, a University of Toronto expert in political satire, stated in 2013, "Without question, if the leading cartoonist back then—James Gillray—had depicted Rob Ford he would have been far more merciless than they are today.

[3] The face of Court Flunkey from the 1980s/1990s British television satirical puppet show Spitting Image is a caricature of Gillray, intended as a homage to the father of political cartooning.