Notable caricaturists

George Cruikshank created political prints that attacked the royal family and leading politicians in 1820 he received a royal bribe of £100 for a pledge "not to caricature His Majesty in any immoral situation." He went on to create social caricatures of British life for popular publications such as The Comic Almanack and Omnibus. He also earned fame as a book illustrator for Charles Dickens and many other authors.
Honoré Daumier is considered by some to be the father of caricature. During his life, he created over 4,000 lithographs, most of them caricatures on political, social and everyday themes. They were published in the daily French newspapers.
A Group of Vultures Waiting for the Storm to "Blow Over"--"Let Us Prey." by Thomas Nast
Wood engraving published in Harper's Weekly newspaper, September 23, 1871
Thomas Nast was a famous caricaturist and editorial cartoonist in the 19th century and is considered by some to be the father of American political cartooning. He is often credited with creating the definitive caricatures of the Democratic Donkey, the Republican Elephant and Santa Claus.
Alex Gard created more than 700 caricatures of show business celebrities and other notables for the walls of Sardi's Restaurant in the theater district of New York City: the first artist to do so. Today the images are part of the Billy Rose Theatre Collection of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.
Al Hirschfeld was best known for his simple black and white renditions of celebrities and Broadway stars which utilized flowing contour lines over heavy rendering. He was also known for depicting a variety of other famous people, from politicians musicians, singers and even television stars like the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation. He has was even commissioned by the United States Postal Service to provide art for U.S. stamps. Permanent collections of Hirschfeld's work appear at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and he boasts a star on the St. Louis Walk of Fame.
Mort Drucker Drucker joined Mad magazine in 1957 and has become well known for his parodies of movies and television shows. He manages to combine a comic strip style with consistent photographic likenesses of film and TV stars panel after panel. He has also contributed covers to Time magazine. He has been recognized for his work with the National Cartoonist Society Special Features Award for 1985, 1986, 1987, and 1988, and their Reuben Award for 1987.
Robert Risko is known for his retro airbrush style. His work has appeared in Rolling Stone, Playboy, Vanity Fair, Esquire, and Interview.
David Levine is noted for his caricatures in the The New York Review of Books and Playboy magazine. His first cartoons appeared in 1963. Since then he has drawn hundreds of pen-and-ink caricatures of famous writers and politicians for the newspaper.
Sam Viviano has done much work for corporations and in advertising, having contributed to Rolling Stone, Family Weekly, Reader's Digest, Consumer Reports, and Mad, of which he is currently the art director. Viviano’s caricatures are known for their wide jaws, which Viviano has explained is a result of his incorporation of side views as well as front views into his distortions of the human face. He has also developed a reputation for his ability to do crowd scenes. Explaining his twice-yearly covers for Institutional Investor magazine, Viviano has said that his upper limit is sixty caricatures in nine days.
Sebastian Krüger is known for his grotesque, yet hyper-realistic distortions of the facial features of celebrities, which he renders primarily in acrylic paint, and for which he has won praise from The Times. He is well known for his lifelike depictions of The Rolling Stones, in particular, Keith Richards. Krüger has published three collections of his works, and has a yearly art calendar from Morpheus International. Krüger's art can be seen frequently in Playboy magazine and has also been featured in the likes of Stern, L’Espresso, Penthouse, and Der Spiegel and USA Today. He has recently been working on select motion picture projects.
Hermann Mejia is known for his frequent work for MAD Magazine. Mejia uses multiple techniques for his work, sometimes rendering his illustrations in black & white ink and copious amounts of cross-hatching, sometimes using watercolor, and sometimes combinations of both.