John Duncombe

John Duncombe was the kind of guy who left his day job to chase prints. He ran a print shop in Norwich, England, until he couldn’t resist the chaos of making his own, and by the late 1700s, his satirical prints were everywhere—cheap, bold, and impossible to ignore. A friend once called them “visual soundbites” for the era’s gossip mill. You’ll spot his style in the H Beard Print Collection, where politicians and socialites get the punchline treatment—look for the one where a bloated MP is weighed against a sack of gold.