Sex, Art and the Victorian Cartoonist: Matthew Somerville Morgan in Victorian Britain and America

Abstract

In the popular imagination, the Victorian Age was a time of repressed sexuality. Michael Palin and Terry Jones famously made fun of this in their 'Ripping Yarn' "The Curse of the Claw" (1977), and "Victorian" has become a synonym for prudishness and extreme aversion to matters of sex. Yet, as several decades of academic study have revealed, the Victorians were actually obsessed with sex and the sexual. They developed a whole new science -- sexology -- to give appropriate form to their obsessions (Caine and Sluga, 2003: 125-130); "sensational" sex-scandals were among the most widely-read copy of even the most respectable newspapers (Diamond, 2003: 120-153); and the homosexuality of Oscar Wilde produced outrage, but also deep fascination ("homosexuality" itself being a word invented by the Victorians). It seems fitting, then, that many of those who did most to "catch the spirit of the age" -- cartoonists -- were also in their own way obsessed with sex. Leonee Ormond's (2010) groundbreaking study of of 'Punch' cartoonist Linley Sambourne (1844-1910) has recently exposed what almost everyone familiar with "Sammy's" work had suspected for some time: his cartoon nudes and keen interest in photography had far more erotic than artistic foundations. A casual glimpse through the pages of 'Punch's' greatest rival -- 'Judy; or the Serio-Comic Weekly' -- between 1902 and 1906 reveals terribly artistic nudity that might qualify the magazine as one of the first ever "lad mags." But perhaps the most fascinating engagement with the Victorian attitude to sex and sexuality by a cartoonist who can be found in the work and life story of Matthew Somerville Morgan (1837-1890).