Isaac Cruikshank (1764–1811) 

• Was a Scottish painter and caricaturist.
• Cruikshank was the son of Andrew Crookshanks, a former customs inspector, dispossessed for his role in the Jacobite rising of 1745 originally from Edinburgh, and Elizabeth Davidson, the daughter of a gardener.

• He was born on 5 October 1764 in Edinburgh.

• Isaac studied with a local artist, possibly John Kay.

• In 1783, Cruikshank left Scotland to travel to London with his master.

• There he married Mary MacNaughton on 14 August 1788.

• The couple had five known children.

• Cruikshank's first known publications were etchings of Edinburgh "types", from 1784.

• He produced illustrations for books about the theatre, did the frontispiece for Witticisms and Jests of Dr. Johnson (1791), and illustrated George Shaw's extensive General Zoology (1800–26).

• He and James Gillray developed the figure of John Bull, the nationalistic representation of a solid British yeoman.

• Near the start of his fame in 1789, Cruikshank produced several watercolours adapted from his earlier drawings, and was on exhibition at the Royal Academy.

• Cruikshank died of alcohol poisoning at the age of forty-six as a result of a drinking contest, of which he was declared the winner.

• He is buried near his home in London.

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