Alfred Grévin
Alfred Grévin was a 19th-century caricaturist, best known during his lifetime for his caricature silhouettes of contemporary Parisian women. He was a sculptor and designed costumes and sets for popular theater, he founded with journalist Arthur Meyer a waxwork museum. Alfred Grevin was born in a house in the main street of Épineuil in 1827, he studied natural sciences and drawing at the College of Tonnerre. His first job was as an apprentice draughtsman for Paris à Lyon à la Méditerranée railways. In his free time, he would draw for fun. In 1853 he moved to Paris, he put his cartooning talents at the service of the newspaper Le Gaulois headed by Arthur Meyer. He went on to work for Le Journal amusant and Le Charivari. To supplement his meager salary as a cartoonist and illustrator, he worked as a theater costume designer, wrote plays. By 1867 he was able settle at 16bis rue de Berulle. In 1869 he founded l'Almanach des Parisiennes with Louis Adrien Huart, in 1875 Grévin designed the 673 costumes for Jacques Offenbach's opéra-féerie Le voyage dans la lune, for Charles Lecocq's opera comique The Daughter of Madame AngotIn 1881, Meyer had the idea, along with Alfred Grévin, to represent the personalities that made the front page of the news section as wax mannequins, which allowed visitors – in an era before photography was used in the press – to put a face to the names in the news.
This was the beginning of the Musée Grévin, which opened its doors on 5 June 1882 and swiftly became successful. Grévin met Émile Zola on several occasions, whom he wanted to include a portrait of in his collections. Grevin spent the final two years of his life paralyzed, died of a sudden stroke of apoplexy in 1892 at Saint-Mandé. Les Parisiennes, a collection of Grévin's illustrations Grévin's illustrations in Le Journal amusant digital editions from Bibliothèque nationale de France Fontaine, Jean-Pierre. Alfred Grévin: De Tonnerre à Montmartre. Français: Éd. de Bourgogne, 2007. ISBN 978-2-902650-11-8. Personalities of Tonnerre Heritage City of Saint Mandé Works by Grévin on Artchive, ArtNet, Original Art, Christie's Art, Great Caricatures Alfred Grévin in American public collections, on the French Sculpture Census website
Sem (artist)
Georges Goursat, known as Sem, was a French caricaturist famous during the Belle Époque. Georges Goursat was raised in an upper-middle-class family from Périgueux; the wealth inherited from his father at the age of 21 allowed him to sustain a gilded youth. In 1888 he self published in Périgueux his first three albums of caricatures, signing some as "SEM" as a tribute to Amédée de Noé who signed his caricatures for Le Monde illustré as "Cham". From 1890 to 1898, he settled for a few years in Bordeaux. During this period, he published more albums and his first press caricatures in La Petite Gironde and discovered the work of Leonetto Cappiello, his style matured, becoming both more precise. During the same period, he made trips to Paris. In 1891, he designed two posters printed in the workshop of Jules Chéret for the singer Paulus, he published his first caricatures of artists in Le Rire. From 1898 to 1900, he lived in Marseille. During this stay, he met Jean Lorrain. Goursat arrived in Paris at the time of the opening of the Universal Exposition.
He picked horse races as his way of entry in high society. In June, three months after his arrival, he self-published a new album, Le Turf, with caricatures of many prominent Parisian socialites; the success of this album made him famous overnight. In October of the same year, he published Paris-Trouville, with the same success. Nine others followed until 1913. In 1904, Goursat received the Légion d'honneur. In 1909, he exhibited with the painter Auguste Roubille, first in Paris in Monte Carlo and London. A diorama, composed of hundreds of wooden figurines "of all the Paris celebrities". Aged over 50 at the start of World War I, Goursat was not drafted, he involved himself as a war correspondent for Le Journal. Some of his rather "chauvinistic" articles had an "enormous impact". Ten were published in 1917 in Un pékin sur le front. Two others were incorporated in 1923 in La Ronde de Nuit. In 1916 and 1918 Goursat published two albums of Croquis de Guerre, their style is different from his previous work.
He designed posters for war bonds. After the war, Goursat came back to the kind of caricatures. In 1919, he published. Around 1923, he published 3 almums under the general title of Le Nouveau Monde. In 1923, he was made an officer of the Légion d'honneur. In 1929, he was impoverished by the economic crisis. After a heart attack in 1933, he died in 1934. Bonnelle, Madeleine. SEM. Périgueux: Pierre Fanlac. ISBN 2-86577-144-X. Dini, Francesca. Boldini, Sem: protagonisti e miti della Belle Epoque. Skira. Website dedicated to Georges Goursat Goursat in L'Illustration Biography of Goursat Description of the diorama
Isaac Cruikshank
Isaac Cruikshank, Scottish painter and caricaturist, was born in Edinburgh and spent most of his career in London. Cruikshank is known for his political satire, his sons Isaac Robert Cruikshank and George Cruikshank became artists, the latter in particular achieved fame as an illustrator and caricaturist. Isaac Cruikshank was born in 1764 to Elizabeth Davidson, daughter of a gardener, Andrew Crookshanks, a former customs inspector, dispossessed for his role in the Jacobite rising of 1745. Isaac grew up in New North Kirk parish in Edinburgh, he was the youngest child, was interested in all sorts of hobbies including sports and music. Isaac studied with a local artist John Kay. In 1783 Cruikshank left Scotland to travel to London with his master. There he married Mary MacNaughton on 14 August 1788; the couple had five known children. A daughter, Margaret Eliza, a promising artist, died at the age of eighteen of tuberculosis, their sons Isaac Robert Cruikshank and George Cruikshank became artists. Cruikshank's first known publications were etchings of Edinburgh "types", from 1784.
His first caricature etching called. He produced illustrations for books about the theatre, did the frontispiece for Witticisms and Jests of Dr Johnson, illustrated George Shaw's extensive General Zoology, his water colours were exhibited, but in order to make a living, he found it more lucrative to produce prints and caricatures. He was responsive to the marketplace but firm in his dislikes of Napoleon and Britain's home grown political radicals, for example, the members of the London Corresponding Society and the Society of the Friends of the People He and James Gillray developed the figure of John Bull, the nationalistic representation of a solid British yeoman, his Olympic games or John Bull introducing his new ambassador to the grand consul and Boney at Brussells contrast an implied European capitulation and British defiance under the threat of invasion. Near the start of his fame in 1789, Cruikshank produced several watercolors adapted from his earlier drawings, was on exhibition at the Royal Academy.
Publisher John Roach was a patron. Cruikshank also worked with print dealer S. W. Fores and Johnny Fairburn, he collaborated with G. M. Woodward, with his son George, he etched and designed lottery tickets and the song-heads of musical scores. Cruikshank died of alcohol poisoning at the age of fifty-five as a result of a drinking contest, of which he was declared the winner, he is buried near his home in London. During the late 18th century, there was an enormous amount of propaganda due to changes of power in Europe, the main being French Revolution; the British Monarchy was being criticized of debauchery during this time, as it was a period of economic hardship and debt. Political caricature and graphic satire became a prominent outlet for mass propaganda to express competing perspectives on political and economic issues; the revolution triggered feelings and expressions of patriotism towards artists' home countries which they depicted by shedding a grotesque light on their countries' enemies.
Isaac Cruikshank, James Gillray, Thomas Rowlandson were considered the leading caricaturists during this period and produced many popular sketches and graphics satirizing contemporary issues. These three prominent artists' distinct styles and subject matter became notable and widespread throughout Europe, although they adapted and borrowed images from lesser known artists; the three illustrators were sometimes considered rivals as their ideas took opposing positions and on important matters, despite sometimes collaborating on works. A common theme in all three artists' works were the portrayal of gluttony and cannibalism meant to represent the exploitation of the monarchy sparked by the effects on the economy of France due to the Revolution Their work, had to be published in Britain, as in France censorship laws were at an all-time high. In 1803 after the French declared war on Britain, numerous patriotic prints resulted focused around support and strength for the British homefront. Cruikshank was one of the first to illustrate Napoleon as a negative caricature in his work Buonaparte at Rome Giving Audience in State.
In 1809, Cruikshank created French Generals Receiving an English Charge which attacked Prince Frederick, Duke of York for his scandalous affairs with Mary Anne Clarke during the time. A contemporary of James Gillray and Thomas Rowlandson, Cruikshank was part of what has been called "the Golden Age of British Caricature." Some have called his work "uneven" but at its best, it provided a vivid insight into the cultural and political preoccupations of the British during the decades at the turn of the nineteenth century. He was an avid and skilled water colorist, had a "keen sense of humour", although his achievements during his shortened life suffered from the greater successes and "more prolonged career of his gifted son."There are believed to be at least 345 prints created by Isaac Cruikshank between 1793 and 1800 that are in the British Museum's collection. E. B. Crumbier created a catalogue of around 1350 images. In Huntington Library, there is a collection of his watercolor drawings. Cruikshank, like his son Isaac Robert Cruikshank and more famous son George Cruikshank, was a pioneer in the history of comics for creating several cartoons which make use of narrative sequences and/or speech balloons
Émile Cohl
Émile Cohl, born Émile Eugène Jean Louis Courtet, was a French caricaturist of the forgotten Incoherent Movement and animator, called "The Father of the Animated Cartoon" and "The Oldest Parisian". Émile's father Elie was a rubber salesman, his mother, Emilie Laure, was a linen seamstress. The rubber factory Elie worked for had many ups and downs, causing the family to move from one home in Paris to another. Émile saw little of his father during his childhood, lived with his ailing mother until her death in 1863. In 1864, at the age of 7, he was enrolled at the Ecole professionnelle de Pantin, a boarding school known as the Institute Vaudron after its founder. There his artistic talents were encouraged; the next year, a cold kept him in his father's apartment, where he began stamp collecting, a hobby that would become his sole source of income several times in his life. The chaos caused by the Franco-Prussian War and the following siege of Paris led to the closing of Elie Courtet's factory. Émile was transferred to the less-exclusive Ecole Turgot, but his lessons were soon forgotten as the teenager wandered the streets of Paris to watch history being made.
He made two discoveries that in time that became the controlling elements of his life: Guignol puppet theater and political caricature. Guignol was a form of drama. A subtype of the Guignol was Fantoche, a form of puppetry where the puppeteer's head was stuck through a hole in a black sheet with a small puppet body underneath. Political caricature had begun in France during the Second Empire, but had been suppressed by Napoleon III. During the free-for-all weeks of the Commune, the caricaturists were free to post broadsheets on the streets for all to see; the center of this activity was the Rue du Croissant, only blocks from the Ecole Turgot. In 1872, Elie Courtet placed his 15-year-old son in a three-year apprenticeship with a jeweler. Émile drew caricatures, enlisted in the Cherbourg regiment, drew some more. Elie placed him with a maritime insurance broker. Émile left the broker, got a much poorer-paying job with a philatelist and declared his preference for drawing, the Bohemian lifestyle, if necessary, going hungry.
In 1878, Émile obtained a letter of recommendation from Étienne Carjat to approach André Gill, the best-known caricaturist of the day, for a job. Gill had made his fame a decade earlier by publishing La Lune, a periodical critical of Napoleon III, his presses were smashed and he was incarcerated. He started La Lune Rousse in 1876 to continue his work. By this time, he had moved beyond attacking individuals to making observations on the ludicrousness of conformist bourgeois values in general. However, the government was becoming liberal, leaving him with few big-name targets; as a result, La Lune Rousse closed in 1879. Émile Courtet's job as one of several assistants to Gill was to complete the backgrounds. During this process, the young man developed a style of caricature based on Gill's. Gill's trademark was the recognizable head of the target atop a small puppet body, it was based on Fantoche puppetry. Émile took this style and added touches to suggest movement and imagery from the rest of Guignol puppetry.
At about this time he adopted the pseudonym of Émile Cohl. The meaning of "Cohl" is obscure: it may be from the pigment known as "kohl", or it means that Émile stuck to his mentor Gill like glue, it was chosen because it sounded exotic. The visual signature of a paste-pot appears in a few of Cohl's caricatures. Adolphe Thiers was succeeded as president by Patrice MacMahon, duc de Magenta, a conservative monarchist, at Sedan, he became less popular under the assault of caricatures. One of these, "Aveugle par Ac-Sedan", a French pun on "accidentally blind" and "Bungler at Sedan", put its creator, Émile Cohl, in jail on October 11, 1879, making him famous. Three months MacMahon resigned in disgrace—the caricaturists liked to believe that they were responsible, he was succeeded by Jules Grévy, who transferred real power from the post of president to the prime minister and legislature. This led to a period of internal prosperity for France. Through Gill, Cohl had become acquainted with an artistic circle calling themselves the Hydropathes.
The group was united by a love of poetry. The group, like many others of the time, based most of their activities on shocking people; as a result of his new-found fame, Cohl was named editor of the group's spokes-piece, L'Hydropathe, on October 28, 1879. At about this time Émile's estranged father died. Émile Cohl set out to discover his abilities and producing two satiric plays that did poorly. The co-author of both plays was Norés, an American, an architect before giving up his former life for Bohemianism on the banks of the Seine. Besides a strong friendship, Norés taught Cohl English, a useful skill on. Émile Cohl married on November 12, 1881. At the same time, André Gill was committed to the Charenton mental asylum, he managed to recover in a few months and in 1882 submitted his first serious painting, Le Fou to the Salon. The painting's poor reception by the artists of the Salon sent him back to Charenton. Meanwhile, the Hydropathes had disbanded in 1882, their place in Cohl's life was replaced by the Incoherents.
The group was founded by Jules Lévy, who coined the phr
George Cruikshank
George Cruikshank was a British caricaturist and book illustrator, praised as the "modern Hogarth" during his life. His book illustrations for his friend Charles Dickens, many other authors, reached an international audience. Cruikshank was born in London, his father, Isaac Cruikshank, was one of the leading caricaturists of the late 1790s and Cruikshank started his career as his father's apprentice and assistant. His older brother, Isaac Robert followed in the family business as a caricaturist and illustrator. Cruikshank's early work was caricature, he illustrated the first, 1823 English translation of Grimms' Fairy Tales, published in two volumes as German Popular Stories. On 16 October 1827, he married Mary Ann Walker. Two years after her death, on 7 March 1851, he married Eliza Widdison; the two lived at North London. Upon his death, it was discovered that Cruikshank had fathered 11 illegitimate children with a mistress named Adelaide Attree, his former servant, who lived close to where he lived with his wife.
Adelaide was ostensibly married and had taken the married surname'Archibold'. Cruikshank's early career was renowned for his social caricatures of English life for popular publications, he achieved early success collaborating with William Hone in his political satire The Political House That Jack Built. In the same year he produced the remarkable anti-abolitionist New Union Club, it satirised. His first major work was Pierce Egan's Life in London in which the characters Tom and Jerry, two'men about town' visit various London locations and taverns to enjoy themselves and carouse; this was followed by The Comic Almanack and Omnibus. He gained notoriety with his political prints that attacked the royal family and leading politicians. In 1820 he received a royal bribe of £100 for a pledge "not to caricature His Majesty" "in any immoral situation", his work included a personification of England named John Bull, developed from about 1790 in conjunction with other British satirical artists such as James Gillray, Thomas Rowlandson.
Cruikshank replaced one of James Gillray, as England's most popular satirist. For a generation he delineated Tories and Radicals impartially. Satirical material came to him from every public event – wars abroad, the enemies of Britain, the frolic, among other qualities, such as the weird and terrible, in which he excelled, his hostility to enemies of Britain and a crude racism is evident in his illustrations commissioned to accompany William Maxwell's History of the Irish rebellion in 1798 where his lurid depictions of incidents in the rebellion were characterised by the simian-like portrayal of Irish rebels. Among the other racially engaged works of Cruikshank there were caricatures about the "legal barbarities" of the Chinese, the subject given by his friend, Dr. W. Gourley, a participant in the ideological battle around the Arrow War, 1856–60. For Charles Dickens, Cruikshank illustrated Sketches by The Mudfog Papers and Oliver Twist. Cruikshank acted in Dickens's amateur theatrical company.
On 30 December 1871 Cruikshank published a letter in The Times which claimed credit for much of the plot of Oliver Twist. The letter launched a fierce controversy around. Cruikshank was not the first Dickens illustrator to make such a claim. Robert Seymour who illustrated the Pickwick Papers suggested that the idea for that novel was his; the friendship between Cruikshank and Dickens soured further when Cruikshank became a fanatical teetotaler in opposition to Dickens's views of moderation. In Somerset Maugham's short story "Miss King", Cruickshank's influence is referenced: "She wore a large white cotton nightcap tied under the chin and a white voluminous nightdress that came high up in the neck. Nightcap and nightdress belonged to a past age and reminded you of Cruickshank's illustrations to the novels of Charles Dickens." In the late 1840s, Cruikshank's focus shifted from book illustration to an obsession with temperance and anti-smoking. A heavy drinker, he now supported, lectured to, supplied illustrations for the National Temperance Society and the Total Abstinence Society, among others.
The best known of these are The Bottle, 8 plates, with its sequel, The Drunkard's Children, 8 plates, with the ambitious work, The Worship of Bacchus, published by subscription after the artist's oil painting, now in the Tate Gallery, London. For his efforts he was made vice president of the National Temperance League in 1856; when the invasion scare of 1859 led to the creation of the Volunteer Movement, Cruikshank was one of those who organised Rifle Volunteer Corps. At first his unit was the 24th Surrey RVC, which recruited from working men who were total abstainers and was named'Havelock's Own' in honour of Major-General Sir Henry Havelock, a hero of the Indian Mutiny and pioneer of Temperance Clubs in the army. However, Cruikshank received little encouragement from the Lord-Lieutenant of Surrey, was rebuked for crossing into Kent to recruit. Disgusted, he disbanded his unit in 1862 and began anew in Middlesex, organising the 48th Middlesex RVC; the unit ran into financial difficulties and when Cruikshank was forced to retire due to age, he was replaced as commanding officer by Lt-Col
Thomas Nast
Thomas Nast was a German-born American caricaturist and editorial cartoonist considered to be the "Father of the American Cartoon". He was the scourge of Democratic Representative "Boss" Tweed and the Tammany Hall Democratic party political machine. Among his notable works were the creation of the modern version of Santa Claus and the political symbol of the elephant for the Republican Party. Contrary to popular belief, Nast did not create Uncle Sam, Columbia, or the Democratic donkey, though he did popularize these symbols through his artwork. Nast was associated with the magazine Harper's Weekly from 1859 to 1860 and from 1862 until 1886. Albert Boime argues that: As a political cartoonist, Thomas Nast wielded more influence than any other artist of the 19th century, he not only enthralled a vast audience with boldness and wit, but swayed it time and again to his personal position on the strength of his visual imagination. Both Lincoln and Grant acknowledged his effectiveness in their behalf, as a crusading civil reformer he helped destroy the corrupt Tweed Ring that swindled New York City of millions of dollars.
Indeed, his impact on American public life was formidable enough to profoundly affect the outcome of every presidential election during the period 1864 to 1884. Nast was born in military barracks in Landau, Germany, as his father was a trombonist in the Bavarian 9th regiment band. Nast was the last child of Joseph Thomas Nast, he had an older sister Andie. His father held political convictions that put him at odds with the Bavarian government, so in 1846, Joseph Nast left Landau, enlisting first on a French man-of-war and subsequently on an American ship, he sent his wife and children to New York City, at the end of his enlistment in 1850, he joined them there. Nast attended school in New York City from the age of six to 14, he did poorly at his lessons. In 1854, at the age of 14, he was enrolled for about a year of study with Alfred Fredericks and Theodore Kaufmann, at the school of the National Academy of Design. In 1856, he started working as a draftsman for Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper.
His drawings appeared for the first time in Harper's Weekly on March 19, 1859, when he illustrated a report exposing police corruption. In February 1860, he went to England for the New York Illustrated News to depict one of the major sporting events of the era, the prize fight between the American John C. Heenan and the English Thomas Sayers sponsored by George Wilkes, publisher of Wilkes' Spirit of the Times. A few months as artist for The Illustrated London News, he joined Garibaldi in Italy. Nast's cartoons and articles about the Garibaldi military campaign to unify Italy captured the popular imagination in the U. S. In February 1861, he arrived back in New York. In September of that year, he married Sarah Edwards, he left the New York Illustrated News to work again for Frank Leslie's Illustrated News. In 1862, he became a staff illustrator for Harper's Weekly. In his first years with Harper's, Nast became known for compositions that appealed to the sentiment of the viewer. An example is "Christmas Eve", in which a wreath frames a scene of a soldier's praying wife and sleeping children at home.
One of his most celebrated cartoons was "Compromise with the South", directed against those in the North who opposed the prosecution of the American Civil War. He was known for drawing battlefields in border and southern states; these attracted great attention, Nast was referred to by President Abraham Lincoln as "our best recruiting sergeant". After the war, Nast opposed the Reconstruction policy of President Andrew Johnson, whom he depicted in a series of trenchant cartoons that marked "Nast's great beginning in the field of caricature". Nast's cartoons had numerous sidebars and panels with intricate subplots to the main cartoon. A Sunday feature could highlight social causes. After 1870, Nast favored simpler compositions featuring a strong central image, he based his likenesses on photographs. In the early part of his career, Nast used a brush and ink wash technique to draw tonal renderings onto the wood blocks that would be carved into printing blocks by staff engravers; the bold cross-hatching that characterized Nast's mature style resulted from a change in his method that began with a cartoon of June 26, 1869, which Nast drew onto the wood block using a pencil, so that the engraver was guided by Nast's linework.
This change of style was influenced by the work of the English illustrator John Tenniel. A recurring theme in Nast's cartoons is anti-Catholicism. Nast was baptized a Catholic at the Sankt Maria Catholic Church in Landau, for a time received Catholic education in New York City; when Nast converted to Protestantism remains unclear, but his conversion was formalized upon his marriage in 1861. Nast considered the Catholic Church to be a threat to American values. According to his biographer, Fiona Deans Halloran, Nast was "intensely opposed to the encroachment of Catholic ideas into public education"; when Tammany Hall proposed a new tax to support parochial Catholic schools, h
David Low (cartoonist)
Sir David Alexander Cecil Low was a New Zealand political cartoonist and caricaturist who lived and worked in the United Kingdom for many years. Low was a self-taught cartoonist. Born in New Zealand, he worked in his native country before migrating to Sydney in 1911, to London, where he made his career and earned fame for his Colonel Blimp depictions and his merciless satirising of the personalities and policies of German dictator Adolf Hitler, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, other leaders of his times. Low was educated in New Zealand, his first work was published. His professional career began at The Canterbury Times in 1910; the following year he worked for The Bulletin. His work attracted the attention of Henry Cadbury, the part owner of The Star, Low moved to London in 1919, working for that paper until 1927, when he moved to the Evening Standard. There he produced his most famous work, chronicling the rise of fascism in the 1930s, the policy of Appeasement, the conflict of World War II.
His stinging depictions of Hitler and Mussolini led to his work being banned in Italy and Germany, his being named in The Black Book. The son of chemist David Brown Low and Jane Caroline Flanagan, David Low was born in Dunedin on 7 April 1891, attended primary school there, his family moved to Christchurch, where Low attended Christchurch Boys' High School. However following the death of his eldest brother, Low was taken out of school, as his parents believed that he had been weakened by over studying. Low's first cartoon was published in 1902, when he was 11 years old, a three-picture strip in the British comic Big Budget. Low began his career as a professional cartoonist with the Canterbury Times in 1910. In 1911 he moved to Australia to join The Bulletin. During his employment at The Bulletin, Low became well known for a 1916 cartoon satirising Billy Hughes the Prime Minister of Australia, entitled The Imperial Conference. After that success, Low published many cartoons depicting Hughes' forceful and eccentric personality.
Hughes was not impressed and called Low a "bastard" to his face. A collection of Low's cartoons of Hughes entitled The Billy Book, which he published in 1918, brought Low to the notice of Henry Cadbury, part-owner of the London Star. In 1919 Cadbury offered Low a job with the Star. In England, Low worked at the London Star from 1919 to 1927; the London Star sympathised with his own moderately left-wing views. In 1927, he accepted an invitation from Max Aitken to join the conservative Evening Standard on the strict understanding that there would be no editorial interference with his output. Low produced numerous cartoons about the Austrian Civil War, the Italian invasion of Ethiopia, the 1936 Summer Olympics, the Spanish Civil War, other events of the interwar period, he worked with Horace Thorogood to produce illustrated whimsical articles on the London scene, under the byline "Low & Terry". John Gunther called Low "the greatest caricaturist in the world". In 1937, Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels told British Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax that British political cartoons those of Low's, were damaging Anglo-German relations.
In 1937 Low had produced an occasional strip about "Hit and Muss", but after Germany made official complaints he substituted a composite dictator, "Muzzler". After the war, Low is said to have found his name in The Black Book, the list of those the Nazis planned to arrest in the aftermath of an invasion of Great Britain, his works are featured in many British history textbooks. On 1 September, the Germans invaded Poland from the west and, on 17 September, the Soviets invaded from the east. Low depicted these events in one of his most famous cartoons, first published in the Evening Standard on 20 September 1939, it satirises the cynicism which lay at the heart of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, showing Hitler and Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin bowing politely across the dead body of Poland, but greeting each other as "the scum of the earth, I believe?" and "the bloody assassin of the workers, I presume?". The words are based on those used by Henry Morton Stanley at his meeting with David Livingstone in 1871.
The Harmony Boys of 2 May 1940 depicts Hitler, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, Spanish dictator Francisco Franco "harmonizing" and getting along quite well. When this cartoon was published, the German invasion of the Soviet Union was still more than a year in the future, his satirical works met much criticism in the British public eye. The British press called him a "war monger," and many citizens felt disdain for his depictions of appeasement. Low remained in the United Kingdom for the rest of his career, he left the Evening Standard in 1950. That same year, he moved to the Daily Herald and stayed there until 1953. Low moved to the Manchester Guardian and was there from 1953. Low received a knighthood in the 1962 Birthday Honours and died at his home in London on 19 September 1963, his obituary in The Guardian described him as "the dominant cartoonist of the western world". A blue plaque commemorates Low at Kensington. Low married Madeline Grieve Kenning of Auckland on 7 June 1920 in Covent Garden.
The couple had two daughters: in 1939, Time described Low's breakfast as "a political meeting, with the cartoonist, his wife, his two young daughters threshing out the news." His wife and daughters survived him. United Kingdom British Cartoon Archive, University of KentPolitical Cartoon Gallery 16
