John Wilkes (1725-1797) was a British politician and journalist, agitator and renowned rake (despite also being renowned for his ugliness: it took him half an hour to talk his face away, he claimed), whose ‘political talent […] lay in his pen’ (ODNB). A radical, through his weekly publication, the North Briton, he was a significant thorn in the side of Lord Bute and George Grenville’s successive governments. This political irritation continued, as, through various legal skirmishes with government, plus his later control of the City of London, he paved the way for substantial legal and parliamentary reform, including establishing the freedom of the press to report on Parliament. Lionised as a ‘champion of liberty,’ Wilkes saw common cause on both sides of the Atlantic and supported American resistance (though not independence).
Caroline Watson (1760/1-1814) was celebrated for her stipple engraving and is considered the first woman to work professionally (i.e. independently, outside of a family enterprise) as an engraver, as well as running her own printing business from Fitzroy Street, London in the 1780s. She became Engraver to the Queen (Charlotte) in 1785. A prolific engraver of portraits, her reproductions included many significant women of the day, such as Elizabeth Carter and Sarah Siddons. Watson’s engraving of Wilkes (after Pine) shows his squint, but with none of Hogarth’s cruel parody; her father, the famed Mezzotint artist James Watson, also produced a version of Pine’s painting.