THE CAVALIERS. - an original printed appearance of this Second World War cartoon featuring British Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill from the 3 January 1945 edition of the magazine Punch, or The London Charivari
London: Punch, 1945. This original printed appearance of a Punch cartoon featuring Winston S. Churchill comes from the personal collection of Gary L. Stiles, author of Churchill in Punch (Unicorn Publishing Group, 2022). His book is the first ever effort to definitively catalog, describe, and contextualize all of the many Punch cartoons featuring Churchill.
This cartoon titled "THE CAVALIERS." appeared thus at the top of page 1 of the 3 January 1945 issue of Punch - the first issue of 1945. The artist is Bernard Partridge. The cartoon rather sunnily features the wartime Allied triumvirate of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Joseph Stalin, and Winston S. Churchill as three musketeers. By the end of the year the war would be won, Roosevelt dead, and Churchill voted out of office, and the victory already fracturing into what would become the Cold War, with only Stalin remaining at the helm of his nation.
Punch or The London Charivari began featuring Churchill cartoons in 1900, when his political career was just beginning. That political career would last two thirds of a century, see him occupy Cabinet office during each of the first six decades of the twentieth century, carry him twice to the premiership and, further still, into the annals of history as a preeminent statesman. And throughout that time, Punch satirized Churchill in cartoons – more than 600 of them, the work of more than 50 different artists.
It was a near-perfect relationship between satirists and subject. That Churchill was distinctive in both persona and physical appearance helped make him easy to caricature. To his persona and appearance he added myriad additional satirical temptations, not just props, like his cigars, siren suits, V-sign, and hats, but also a variety of ancillary avocations and vocations, like polo, painting, brick-laying, and writing. All these were skewered as well.
Some Punch cartoons were laudatory, some critical, and many humorous, like the man himself. Nearly always, Churchill was distinctly recognizable, a larger-than-life character whose presence caricature served only to magnify. Item #007168
Price: $60.00