NEW YORK, NY.- Satire from James Gillray, the ‘father’ of the political cartoon, features strongly at Swann Auction Galleries in New York on June 7.

More than a dozen comical and hard-hitting views of English life set against the backdrop of the French Revolution and the rise of Napoleon focus on incompetence, corruption, hypocrisy and the horrors of war – often in a much more graphic manner than later imitators.

Among them is this hand-coloured etching, above, The Valley of the Shadow of Death, published in London in 1808. A hellish vision of European war, it depicts Bonaparte beset on all sides by his enemies. The estimate is $1,500 to $2,500.

As colourful and contemptuous of Napoleon’s transformation from faithful champion of the king and people to feckless tyrant is Democracy; _or_ a Sketch of the Life of Bounaparte, another hand-coloured etching in the form of a comic strip, published in London in 1800. The estimate is $1,500 to $2,500.

Corruption is the theme of Ci-devant Occupations _or_ Madame Talian and the Empress Josephine dancing Naked before Barrass in the Winter of 1797. _A fact!

Little remembered outside France today, Paul Barras was a leading politician and military commander during the French Revolution and is noted for bringing about the marriage of Napoleon and Josephine de Beauharnais as part of his strategy to underpin his and his four co-leaders’ political control of the Republic with the support of Napoleon’s army. A hand-coloured etching published in London in 1805, there is a copy of it in the Metropolitan Museum in New York. The estimate is $2,500 to $3,500.

Maniac-Ravings _ or _ Little Boney in a Strong Fit, from 1803, depicts the French leader trampling on treaties and other documents amid the upturned chaos of his furniture, including a damaged globe punctured where Europe should be. The estimate is $1200 to $1800.