Charles Wirgman

Cartoon by Charles Wirgman published in the Japanese magazine Mezamashigusa in 1897 (top panel)

Charles Wirgman (born August 31, 1832 - † February 8, 1891 ) was a British painter, illustrator and caricaturist . Together with Georges Bigot he made the style of European caricatures known in Japan.

Live and act

Wirgman traveled to Asia as an illustrator on behalf of the Illustrated London News in 1857 and came to Yokohama via China in 1861 , where he married a Japanese woman and worked from then on. With the British diplomat Ernest Satow , Charles Wirgman undertook extensive trips to the Japanese hinterland.

From the early 1860s he became acquainted with the photographer Felice Beato , with whom he accompanied French and British troops on a punitive expedition from Hong Kong to Beijing as part of the Second Opium War . The friendship between the two artists continued in Japan , where both worked together from 1864 to 1867 in a partnership under the name Beato & Wirgman . Due to growing personal tensions, however, Wirgman and Beato broke up in 1867.

In 1862 he founded the English language The Japan Punch , a Japanese edition of the Punch magazine , the first magazine in the style of British satirical magazines , which appeared with interruptions until 1887 with a monthly circulation of around 200 per issue.

Wirgman had a great influence on contemporary Japanese artists, including Takahashi Yuichi ( Japanese 高橋由一 ; 1828-1894) and Tamura Sōryū ( 田村宗立 ; 1846-1918). In the decades after The Japan Punch was first published , several satirical magazines were published in the Japanese language (including Marumaru Chimbun ), which formed the basis for the development of a Japanese cartoon style.

Wirgman's grave is in the Yokohama International Cemetery .

His brother was the painter and etcher Theodore Blake Wirgman .