***EMBARGOED UNTIL 9am TUESDAY 1 SEPTEMBER 2026***

Daniel Crouch Rare Books presents The Andrew Edmunds Collection of Caricatures at Frieze Masters 2026.

The most important private collection of eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century caricatures ever assembled.

Daniel Crouch Rare Books is delighted to announce the exhibition of The Andrew Edmunds Collection of Caricatures at Frieze Masters 2026.Formed over half a century by the late Soho restaurateur,art dealer, and collector Andrew Edmunds (1943–2022),this astonishing assemblage comprises more than 10,000 prints dating from c1680 to c1850.It is the largest and finest collection of satirical prints in private hands.

Unrivalled in scope and quality,the Edmunds Collection outclasses even the British Museum’s holdings-the only institutional collection of greater size–in condition and richness of impression, and includes at least a thousand prints absent from the Museum’s catalogue.It contains the largest known concentrations of works by the giants of British caricature:

James Gillray:over 1,200 prints,including masterpieces such as 7e Plumb-pudding in Danger, Fashionable Contrasts, Gout, and the only known example of an erotic print by the artist.

William Hogarth:300 works,including his engraved self-portrait Gulielmus Hogarth, first states of the Four Stages of Cruelty woodcuts,and a complete lifetime folio of engravings

 Thomas Rowlandson: More than 500 prints, among them Rachel Pringle of Bardaboes and La Place Victoire á Paris.

Other highlights includeThomas Patch’s poignant portrait of a dying Laurence Sterne And When Death Himself Knocked at My Door;George Bickham’s1746 warming-pansatire;Louis-François Roubiliac Goupy’s delightful caricature of Handel,7e Charming Brute; and the only known copy of a 1779 satire on Mrs Phillips’s sex shop,7e Insurance Office.Together, these works trace the evolution of caricature from Restoration wit to Regency excess, illuminating three centuries of social, political,and artistic life.

Beyond individual brilliance,the Edmunds Collection is remarkable for its breadth of themes:

Women - from pioneering publishers Mary Darly and Hannah Humphreys to depictions of fashion and female agency.

Race and Empire-including Newton’s Cruelty and Oppression Abroad and images probing Britain’s colonial conscience.

 National Rivalry-English caricatures of the French,and vice versa,in the age of Napoleon. Everyday Culture - food, drink, sex, politics,and the bustling print-shop trade itself.

As a window on the raillery and passion of Georgian Britain,these prints remain strikingly modern. Their savage wit, graphic exuberance,and visual shorthand echo today in political cartoons,animation, and even internet memes.In an era of polarised politics and populist media,eighteenth-century caricature feels like a mirror held up to our own noisy public life.

Daniel Crouch of Daniel Crouch Rare Books comments: 

“Andrew Edmunds’s collection is a monument to one man’s passion for graphic satire. It celebrates the artists who defined a new visual language of commentary - one that shaped British identity and still informs how we picture politics today.To show it at Frieze Masters is a once-in-a-generation privilege.”

Exhibition:The Andrew Edmunds Collection of Caricatures

Presented by: Daniel Crouch Rare Books Where: Frieze Masters, Regents Park, London

When:14–18 October 2026 (Preview 13 October)