John Bull - Portrayal

Portrayal

Bull is usually portrayed as a stout, portly man in a tailcoat with light-coloured breeches and a top hat which by its shallow crown indicates its middle class identity. During the Georgian period his waistcoat is red and/or his tailcoat is royal blue which, together with his buff or white breeches, can thus refer to a greater or lesser extent to the 'blue and buff' scheme, used by supporters of Whig politics which is part of what John Arbuthnot wished to deride when he invented the character. By the twentieth century however his waistcoat nearly always depicts a Union Flag, and his coat is generally dark blue (but otherwise still echoing the fashions of the Regency period). He also wears a low topper (sometimes called a John Bull topper) on his head and is often accompanied by a bulldog. John Bull has been used in a variety of different ad campaigns over the years, and is a common sight in British editorial cartoons of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Singer David Bowie famously wore a coat worn in the style of Bull.

Washington Irving described him in his chapter entitled "John Bull" from The Sketch Book:

• "... plain, downright, matter-of-fact fellow, with much less of poetry about him than rich prose. There is little of romance in his nature, but a vast deal of a strong natural feeling. He excels in humour more than in wit; is jolly rather than gay; melancholy rather than morose; can easily be moved to a sudden tear or surprised into a broad laugh; but he loathes sentiment and has no turn for light pleasantry. He is a boon companion, if you allow him to have his humour and to talk about himself; and he will stand by a friend in a quarrel with life and purse, however soundly he may be cudgelled."

The cartoon image of stolid, stocky, conservative and well-meaning John Bull, dressed like an English country squire, sometimes explicitly contrasted with the conventionalised scrawny, French revolutionary sans-culottes Jacobin, was developed from about 1790 by British satirical artists James Gillray, Thomas Rowlandson and George Cruikshank. (An earlier national personification was Sir Roger de Coverley, from The Spectator (1711).)

In 1966, The Times, criticising the Unionist government of Northern Ireland, famously branded the province "John Bull's Political Slum".

In a suffragette cartoon of 1912, John Bull is portrayed looking out of the window of a house over whose door the sign says "Franchise Villa", while his wife knocks on the door, with the accompanying text:
John Bull: "How long are you going on making that noise outside?"
Mrs Bull: "Till you let me in, John!"

Increasingly through the early twentieth century, John Bull became seen as not particularly representative of 'the common man', and during the First World War this function was largely taken over by the figure of Tommy Atkins.

John Bull's surname is also reminiscent of the alleged fondness of the English for beef, reflected in the French nickname for English people, les rosbifs (the "Roast Beefs"). It is also reminiscent of the animal, and for that reason Bull is portrayed as "virile, strong, and stubborn" like a bull.

A typical John Bull Englishman is referenced in Margaret Fuller's Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 in Chapter 2: "Murray's travels I read, and was charmed by their accuracy and clear broad tone. He is the only Englishman that seems to have traversed these regions, as man, simply, not as John Bull."