During the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, English low comedians were continually depicted in portraits, prints, illustrations, and caricatures, both in character and as themselves. Critical accounts of low comedians not only draw regularly on the language of contemporary art criticism, but also render in prose highly visual depictions of the comedians' physical appearance and performance. What is portrayed, whether in paint or prose, is not just the creation of the critic or the artist: comic actors, through imagination and observation, create both their individual stage personae and the characters they represent. While theatrical portraiture is inevitably influenced by the artist's own style and perceptions, the artist is also recording a copy of a portrait already created and delineated by another's hand. Even the critic's use of imagery in describing comic performance in prose is fired by what actors have already created.For a discussion of the influence of Hogarth and issues of caricature on discussions of comic actors, see Jim Davis, “They Shew Me Off in Every Form and Way: The Iconography of English Comic Acting in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries,” Theatre Research International 26.3 (October 2001): 243–56.