Cheshire Cat(s)

You can believe this or not – well, obviously – but it wasn’t until I came to post my copy of Up A Tree ( the Tenniel cartoon from Punch that may possibly have inspired one of his illustrations of the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland) that I realised that I haven’t up to now copied the illustration in question. So here’s my copy I’ve just done. 

Here's my copy of the Up A Tree Cartoon which Tenniel made in 1862 as well.

The fact is that I have copied Cheshire Cat illustrations before, just not this one. I copied the Tenniel illustration where the cat’s head appears in the sky over the field with the Queen and King of Hearts.

I’ve also copied Mervyn Peake’s rather sinister Cheshire Cat,

and Arthur Rackham’s Cheshire Cat –

and Helen Oxenbury’s Cheshire Cat -

and even Ralph Steadman’s Cheshire Cat –

I may be mistaken but I think that Tenniel’s original of this particular illustration has appeared as part of the Google logo before.

The Cheshire Cat has been something of a gift to political cartoonists over the years. The idea of rapidly disappearing until only the smile is left is a highly useful metaphor for a whole multitude of issues and policies. The grin itself is a godsend. Just researching yesterday I found depictions of Prime Ministers Edward Heath and Tony Blair as the Cheshire Cat, and I wasn’t even trying. There’s been many depictions of Donald Trump as the Cheshire cat as well. Interestingly the idea of a Cheshire cat wasn’t even invented by Lewis Carroll. Carroll was born in Cheshire, which may have attractd him to the phrase ‘Grinning like a Cheshire cat’ which was in usage long before he wrote the book. One theory is that it got it’s name from assign painter in Cheshire who was known for painting grinning lions, for reasons best known to himself.