The development of cartoons will be the topic of the next Arts Society Isle of Man illustrated lecture.

Magician, speaker and author Ian Keable will present ‘From Hogarth To Private Eye: History Of Cartoons’ at the Manx Museum, in Douglas, on Tuesday next week (November 21) at 11.30am.

He will explain that satire, caricature, speech bubbles and the writing of captions have been around longer than the word ‘cartoon’ in the sense that we know it today. It was first used in an 1843 Punch magazine.

Ian will talk about the history of cartoons bursting the bubble of seemingly pompous politicians and highlighting social injustice and lampooning social mores using humour and a few strokes of a drawing pen, making people and situations recognisable often without using names.

William Hogarth mocked English society and was loved for it. His series of paintings on moral subjects was made into etchings and sold by subscription. His work is exhibited in galleries including the Metropolitan in New York and Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum.

James Gillray’s easily recognised characters of Napoleon and William Pitt the Younger highlight succinctly and humorously the political scene of the time and his work is displayed in London’s National Portrait Gallery.

John Tenniel’s work was described as a combination of the grotesque and realism. He was the first cartoonist to be knighted for his work. He is renowned as the illustrator of the first edition of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland.

John Leech was a leading artist for Punch from its inception and well known for his illustrations for Charles Dickens and his mockery of the new cowpox vaccinations in his cartoons.

David Low, a New Zealand born cartoonist, able to capture likenesses with great economy of line, considered one of the time’s best political cartoonists and creator of the well remembered character Colonel Blimp.

Heath Robinson became a byword for fantastical machines thanks to his cartoons showing humorous and imaginative contraptions doing everyday tasks. The extended family created by Giles was filled with their reaction to political situations affecting family life and extra jokes.

Ian gained a first class degree from Oxford University, qualified as a Chartered Accountant and then became a professional magician.

He is a member of the Inner Magic Circle. He published ‘Charles Dickens Magician: Conjuring in Life, Letters and Literature’ in 2014 and ‘The Century of Deception: The Birth of the Hoax in Eighteenth Century England’ in 2021.

All are welcome to attend the lecture. It costs £10 for non-members.