Robert Seymour (illustrator) - Conflicts With Figaro

Conflicts With Figaro

In 1831, Seymour began work for a new magazine called Figaro in London (pre-Punch), producing 300 humorous drawings and political caricatures to accompany the mundane, political topics of the day and the texts of Gilbert à Beckett (1811–56). This cheap weekly reflected the clever but abusive character of the owner and editor, a’Beckett, a friend of Charles Dickens and the publisher of George Cruikshank, who, in 1827, argued against Seymour’s parody of his work and nom-de-plume of 'Shortshanks'. Gilbert à Beckett later in 1834 insulted Seymour by replacing him with Cruikshank’s brother. This partnership lasted until 1834, when à Beckett suffered a heavy financial loss and refused to pay Seymour. A’Beckett then launched a public media campaign cruelly libelling Seymour, who resigned, only returning when Henry Mayhew replaced à Beckett as the Figaro editor. This humiliating public smear was attributed as a cause for the coroner’s suicide verdict.

Nevertheless, Seymour was now established as pre-eminent an illustrator as George Cruikshank, and as one of the greatest artists since the days of Hogarth, predicted by Sir Richard Phillips, that if he lived, he would become President of the Royal Academy. In 1834, at the height of his prosperity, independently, Seymour launched a new series of lithographs; Sketches by Seymour (1834–36), all depicting expeditions of over-equipped and under-trained Cockneys pursuing cats, birds and stray pigs on foot and on horseback, as experienced in his 1827 fishing and shooting expeditions with his friend Cruickshank.