Drawing caricatures can simply be a form of entertainment and amusement – in which case gentle mockery is in order – or the art can be employed to make a serious social or political point. In a lecture titled The History and Art of Caricature, the British caricaturist Ted Harrison said that the caricaturist can choose to either mock or wound the subject with an effective caricature.
They were, however, great friends and caroused together in the pubs of London.
Gillray was more concerned with the vicious visual satirisation of political life. Rowlandson was more of an artist, and his work took its inspiration mostly from the public at large. Elsewhere, two great practitioners of the art of caricature in 18th-century Britain were Thomas Rowlandson (1756–1827) and James Gillray (1757–1815). George Townshend whose caricatures of British General James Wolfe, depicted as "Deformed and crass and hideous" (Snell), were drawn to amuse fellow officers. These caricatures were the work of Brig.-Gen. 1762), the first known North American caricatures were drawn in 1759 during the battle for Quebec. While the first book on caricature drawing to be published in England was Mary Darly's A Book of Caricaturas (c. James Gillray's The Plumb-pudding in danger (1805), which caricatured Pitt and Napoleon, was voted the most famous of all UK political cartoons.