I concur...the book is terrific! A lot of the how-to-draw books contain lots of fluff and the "Hey look at me I'm a great artist because I say I am." spiel. Not this book, every page is filled with tons of useful information. And that IS the best caricature of you I've ever seen too!
The Mad Art Of Caricature
Claude Monet was 16 years younger. He had been born in Paris, but his family moved to Le Havre when he was five to open a grocery store. Young Monet was unruly and cocky. His school notebooks were filled with impudent caricatures of his teachers and other townsfolk. By 15 he was exhibiting these satiric portraits at Boudin's shop and selling them for 20 francs - a good price considering Millet was doing full-scale oil portraits for 30 francs.
Monet later recalled that when he heard passers-by exclaiming over his caricatures he ``nearly choked with vanity and self-satisfaction.'' In the same window were also displayed subtly colored marine landscapes which he, and most of the rest of the townspeople, found ``disgusting.'' He flatly refused to meet their painter, Boudin.
But one day when Monet was in the shop, Boudin came up to him and, as Monet remembered, ``complimented me in his gentle voice and said `... you are gifted; one can see that at a glance. But I hope you are not going to stop there. ... Soon you will have had enough of caricatures. Study, learn to see and to paint, draw, make landscapes. The sea and the sky, the animals, the people, and the trees are so beautiful, just as nature made them with their character, their genuineness, in the light, in the air, just as they are.'''
After six months of Boudin's mentoring, Monet told his father that he wished to become a painter. His father applied to the municipal council for his son to receive the same fellowship which had been granted earlier to Boudin. But the young man's clever caricatures weighed against his serious intentions in the minds of the city fathers. Monet, who had put aside some of his money for those caricatures, set off for Paris. The career that followed brought great poverty and anguish, but ultimately, great fame.
By the late 1870s, Aestheticism had become a favored subject of parody in England's Punch and Fun -- magazines specializing in comic commentary on contemporary characters. Writers for the magazines felt it their duty to mock what they saw as an "aesthetic" school of poetry and art; caricatures created by Punch generally had long hair, wore strange costumes and spoke in an archaic, allusive language. Early in his career, Gilbert had contributed articles to Punch, and so was fully in his element when he set about drafting his satirical spoof on Aesthetic poets, entitled Patience, or Bunthorne's Bride. Gilbert employed some of the same caricatures found in Punch because he knew his audience would find them familiar.
Based on Gilbert's earlier Bab Ballad (a type of burlesque), The Rival Curates, Patience revolves around two rival poets, Reginald Bunthorne and Archibald Grosvenor, which some contemporaries thought to be caricatures of Oscar Wilde and Algernon Swinburne. (Although Gilbert avoided clear references to any particular poet, he did write Bunthorne's verses in Swinburne's style.) Bunthorne lives in a castle with his family and enjoys adding up his receipts. He even states that if he had the Elysian Fields, he would rent them out. Grosvenor, on the other hand, is an idyllic poet and "true" aesthetic, who despises money. Conflict arises when both try to woo the same woman, who has neither money nor social standing; in the end, Grosvenor abandons his appearance of aestheticism. However, the Heavy Dragoons, the philistines of Patience, also depend on appearances, certain that their uniforms will attract women. When this does not work, they dress up as poets; like Bunthorne, they are phonies. Gilbert's satire was not aimed at the "aesthetics" as much as at their fawning followers, represented in Patience by 20 love-sick women. 2ff7e9595c
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