George Cruikshank's "The Worship of Bacchus" in Focus

George Cruikshank's "The Worship of Bacchus" has not been displayed in public for nearly 100 years. Brought back into view, it offers a unique vision of mid-nineteenth-century Britain, its manners, morals, vices and hypocrisies, and the ideals of those who sought to change them. It also bears testimony to the inventiveness and beliefs of Cruikshank, a remarkable figure too often left out of conventional histories of British art. Cruikshank was teetotaler, and intended "Bacchus" to sum up his passionately held beliefs about the social damage drink could cause, and to convert all who saw it to total abstinence. Teeming with figures, the picture meticulously catalogs all the horrors of alcohol. In this fascinating new stufy Robert Upstone reassesses this forgotten work, and place it in the context of Cruikshank's life and career, and also within the wider phenomena of the Victorian temperance movement and debates about social regulation and responsibility.