John Wilkes

British politician and firebrand John Wilkes, depicted with an exaggerated squint and crossed eyes, leers at the viewer in this caricature drawn by artist William Hogarth. Wilkes holds a staff and liberty cap and sits next to issues seventeen and forty-five of his radical political journal The North Briton. Wilkes had been arrested for publishing libel and sedition in issue forty-five of his journal shortly before Hogarth published this caricature. Hogarth himself had been the subject of Wilkes’ fierce criticism in The North Briton number seventeen. This etching of Wilkes, intentionally hideous and meant to make him appear ridiculous, remains Wilkes’ most recognizable likeness. Despite having to flee Britain for four years because of his sedition case, for which he eventually served two years in prison, Wilkes remained politically popular and served successfully as lord mayor of London from 1774–1775.