SEER, Vol.84, No.3, July 2006 The Crimean War and the Caricature War ANTHONY CROSS CARICATURE is a genre in which the British have been pre-eminent since the times of Hogarth. Despite significantcontributionsfrom the Dutch, French and Germans, there can be little argument that for quality, quantity, variety and, indeed, for precision bombing and outrageousness,the workproduced in Englandfrom the second half of the eighteenth centurythroughthe firstquarterof the nineteenth,from Hogarth to the younger Cruikshank,was unparallelledand unrivalled. Towards the end of that golden age, George Cruikshank(I792-I878), barely out of his teens, achieved prominence for his attackson Napoleon and his portrayalof the GrandeArmee'signominiousretreatfrom Moscow. And it was Cruikshankwho by his imitation and adaptation of similarly directed Russian caricatures brought to the notice of Europethe very existence of Russianpractitionersin the genre, notably the talented Ivan Terebenev (i78o-I8I5).1 The sudden flowering of Russian caricature, which built to some extent on the heritage of the lubok, the popular woodcuts and engravings that had been produced in Russia for over a century, was also indebted to an acquaintancewith Europeancaricatures,importedinto St Petersburg alongside numerous other European consumer goods and artefacts.2Officialresistanceto the genre was, however, strong.In i8o8, the well-knownpainterAlekseiVenetsianov (1780-I847)began to publish his Zhurnal karikatur Journal of Caricatures),but was soon told that 'His Majestythe Emperorhas ordered that furtherpublicationof theJournalofCaricatures be suspended,noting that the editor might turn his talent to a much better subject and might use his time to greater advantage'.3 Incomprehension at English enthusiasm for caricature Anthony Cross is Professor Emeritus of Slavonic Studies at the University of Cambridge and a Retired Professorial Fellow of Fitzwilliam College. 1 See Anthony Cross, 'Through the Distorting Mirror: Russia in British Caricature, to I815', Pinokoteka, I8-I9, 2004, pp. 74-82 (pp. 8o-8i). 2 On Russian acquaintance with the work of Hogarth, see Lu.D. Levin, 'Uil'iam Khogart i russkaia literatura', in M. P. Alekseev and R. lu. Danilevskii (eds), Russkaialiteratura i zarubezhnoe iskusstvo,Leningrad, I986, pp. 35-6I. The word 'karikatura' or 'karrikatura' is first instanced in a Russian text in I790: see Slovar'russkogo iazykaXVIII veka,vyp. 9, St Petersburg,1997, p. 258. A. Novitskii, 'Satiricheskie kartinki kak material dlia istorii Rossii', Russkoeobozrenie, February I894, p. 807. ANTHONY CROSS 46I was also widespread. Nikolai Karamzin (I766-I826) had noted in a volume of his Pis'marusskogo puteshestvennika (Letters of a Russian Traveller ), published in i8oi but referring to his visit to London in the summer of 1790, how 'I look at the amusing caricatures displayed on the doors of print-shops and am astonished at the taste of the English', before describing a particular example in which the British government was engaged in bloody fisticuffs with the Spanish over the Nootka Sound.4 In I8I3, Sarah, Lady Lyttleton mentioned in a letter home a conversation she had had with a Russian noblewoman in St Petersburg: Went yesterday to Mme. Paliansky'sand sat agreeably with her and her sister for an hour. No making her understandhow English Governments survive the print-shop windows in London. Told her of the Prince of Hessenstein'svisit to Mr. Fox when Minister, and of his being desired by Mr. F. to lounge over some caricaturestill he was at leisure to attend to him, Mr. Fox himselfbeing the principalfigurein each. Mme. Palianskyat this moment in a hopeless puzzle about it.5 When in the last decades of the eighteenth century, Gillray, Newton, Rowlandson and Isaac Cruikshank, to name but the most eminent, pilloried Catherine II and Paul 1,6 there were, of course, no answering salvoes from Russian artists against the British, not that the British caricaturists needed outside help in their own merciless attacks on British royals and politicians. Russian caricature was born during the Napoleonic wars and made, as we have seen, common cause against Boney and there was no hint of Anglo-Russian cross-fire. The reign of Nicholas I, however, ushered in a further period of mutual distrust and hostility that resulted in a few British caricatures against Russia, but once more there was no answering fire, for Russian caricature had faded almost as soon as it had bloomed. Nicholas...