Kepler And The Heyday of Political Cartoons

[il ragno]

Sherman, set the wayback machine for the lost Golden Age of the political and editorial cartoon: 1880-1920 era, give or take a decade either way. Sure thing, Mr Peabody – but can’t you find them right now in any newspaper in America on the op-ed page? Quiet, you.

http://www.bpib.com/illustrat/mccay8.gif
Winsor McCay

See, it ain't the same. The comparative levels of workmanship and pugnaciousness, then and now, are as night and day. The grand masters of this wing of American art - Nast, Zim, Rogers, McCay, Young, etc – represent a scabrously magnificent tradition artistically unmatched by all their inheritors combined. The political cartoons of this era are a still-undiscovered treasure trove crying out for new eyes to drink them in.

http://elections.harpweek.com/1908/cartoons/05160018a9bd5w.jpg
William Allen Rogers

The greatest of the post-Nast cartoonists…and quite possibly the greatest editorial cartoonist, ever … was Joseph Kepler (1838-1894), the publisher and guiding genius of PUCK Magazine, today a forgotten name but a landmark in American culture. A brief gallery of images, with a nice sampling of Kepler’s gorgeous work (and a brief bio) follows. Enjoy.

http://www.checkerbpg.com/images/wm55_lg.jpg
Winsor McCay

[il ragno]

http://www.racontours.com/archive/puck_magazine.php

Named for the mischievous fairy in Shakespeare's“Mid-Summer Night's Dream,” Puck Magazine was the brainchild of German Political Cartoonist Joseph Kepler. He founded it in 1876 to poke fun at the political classes.
For the first year, it was only published in German, which gives you an idea of how many Germans lived in New York City. Out of a total population of 1.5 million in 1890, more than 400,000 people were either born in Germany or came from at least one German parent.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/ARTkeppler1.jpg
Joseph Keppler published a drawing of himself asleep while the politicians repainted his images of them

Puck was an instant hit in German, and the next year it came out in English as well. By 1885, circulation had reached close 100,000, and Kepler's cartoons were the talk of the town.

http://www.racontours.com/Pic%27s/NS/puck---hayes,garfield.gif
The year is 1881, and out-going president Rutherford B. Hayes is leaving the baby of Civil Service Reform on the doorstep of President-elect James Garfield.

[Fade the Butcher]

He founded it in 1876 to poke fun at the political classes.

I take it he has been something of an inspiration to you. :)

[il ragno]

This style of political satire was entirely new in America and represented a degree of sophistication imported from Europe - along with its readers.
The Puck building lies along our tour of Soho, standing on the corner of Houston and Lafayette. In 1917, the Magazine met its match in the person of William Randolph Hearst, who after years of abuse from its pen, finally managed to silence it by buying the magazine and closing it down.

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~MA96/PUCK/157.jpg

[il ragno]

The 19th-century standard-bearer, Thomas Nast.

http://www.thomasnast.com/TheCartoons/NastAndDegas/TheMassacreMd.jpg
The Massacre of New Orleans 1867

http://www.thomasnast.com/TheCartoons/NastAndDegas/AmphitheatrumJohnsonianumMd.jpg
Amphitheatrum Johnsonian 1866

[il ragno]

Eugene ("Zim") Zimmerman

http://elections.harpweek.com/1900/cartoons/seehowTP5w.jpg

[il ragno]

Art Young's Capitalism, 1916:

http://www.graphicwitness.org/historic/aycapi~1.jpg

[il ragno]

More Kepler. Which is actually spelled Keppler, dammit!

http://www.graphicwitness.org/group/pkkep.jpg

http://www.graphicwitness.org/group/pkatty.jpg

[il ragno]

That mighta been one too many. I'll bump it to pg 2.

[il ragno]

Bump again.

[il ragno]

And, in closing, a Richard Outcault Yellow Kid page from 1896...and one of the most unflinching looks at slum life ever depicted.

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~MA04/wood/ykid/images/centennial/dogcatcher_37LG.jpg

[Donny the Punk]

Muddled hodgepodges. The greatest of the post-Nast cartoonists…and quite possibly the greatest editorial cartoonist, ever … was Sir John Tenniel.

http://www.historytoday.com/digimaker/pictures/CC-Tenniel-Pilot_vLhSIWot.jpg
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Jtennielireland.JPG
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/WarFran.jpg

Ranked with Gustav Dore and Sir John Gilbert, in my opinion.

[il ragno]

Unquestionably great. But not American.

[Donny the Punk]

That's right, I forgot about your theme. Carry on then, sorry. :)

EDIT: though neither was Godward, come to think of it. :p

[Dan Dare]

First rate stuff, ragno. It's frustrating that many of the captions are so topical that their full meaning is obscured to us (that is our shortcoming not theirs).

Please keep them coming.

[il ragno]

http://elections.harpweek.com/1860/cartoons/WAP1101600006d5w.jpg
1860, artist unknown

http://elections.harpweek.com/1872/cartoons/LiberalCons5w.jpg
1872, Thomas Nast – The Liberal Conspirators

[il ragno]

http://elections.harpweek.com/1880/cartoons/0481d5w.jpg
1880, A.B. Frost – Democratic Trojan Horse


http://elections.harpweek.com/1892/cartoons/10290279QC5w.jpg
1892, Bernhard Gillam- The Day Before Waterloo

[il ragno]

http://elections.harpweek.com/1884/cartoons/VoiceForCleveland5w.jpg
1884, Frank Beard- Another Voice for Cleveland

http://elections.harpweek.com/1884/cartoons/HisOwnDestroyer5w.jpg
1884, Friedrich Graetz- His Own Destroyer

[il ragno]

http://elections.harpweek.com/1904/cartoons/1195d5w.jpg
1904, Wm Allen Rogers- Keeping Cool


http://elections.harpweek.com/1904/cartoons/1079d5w.jpg
1904, Wm Allen Rogers- Trust Busters At Work

[il ragno]

Anybody who likes this stuff and wants more- more- MORE!!, should be aware that all but one of the images I posted on page 2 are from a great great GREAT online resource:

http://elections.harpweek.com/default.asp

which lets you follow entire Presidential campaigns, 1860-1912, via dozens of the concurrent political cartoons for each campaign, with a sort of text concordance beneath each one; many election years even have cartoons grouped by specific issues, scandals and/or turning points in the campaign season. Invaluable whether your interest is politics, American history, satire or cartoon art, and like finding a bag full of somebody else's money if you dig all four.

PS to Potyondi:

The Godward thread begins thusly: Beginning a series of Phora galleries on great but overlooked 19th century European art, and some of the post WW1 American commercial artists who carried on the traditions. So I'm covered.

[Stanley]

IR, I'm going to have to disagree with you here. Bill Mauldin, Jeff McNelly, Oliphant, Herblock, Theodore Geiss -- their drawings are crap, but they get their message across, and that's all you can really expect from a political cartoonist.

[il ragno]

Oh yeah I don't begrudge them their effectiveness and their audience; my point is that you can't compare the amount of sweat and detail put into the drawings - the vicious partisan lampooning is startling only compared to the modern era up until Bush I, though. After Clinton got in, you could never look at the office the same way again, and as a result nobody does.

[wintermute]

Ranked with Gustav Dore and Sir John Gilbert, in my opinion.

I don't know about John Gilbert, but I think Tenniel is poorly served by comparisons to Dore, who probably deserves his own thread. You have to recall, Dore provided convincing and persuasive illusatrations - hundreds of them - for the Bible, Dante, and Milton!

All of which is not to gainsay Tenniel's achievement.

Behold!

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/People/rgs/alice25a.gif

`Take some more tea,' the March Hare said to Alice, very earnestly.

`I've had nothing yet,' Alice replied in an offended tone, `so I can't take more.'

`You mean you can't take less,' said the Hatter: `it's very easy to take more than nothing.'

`Nobody asked your opinion,' said Alice.

`Who's making personal remarks now?' the Hatter asked triumphantly.


WM

[Will Scarlet]

http://img480.imageshack.us/img480/1273/072971l9tt.th.jpg (http://img480.imageshack.us/my.php?image=072971l9tt.jpg)
"Has no caste, no sect, no nation any rights that the infallible, ultramontane Roman Irish Catholic is bound to respect?"

http://img160.imageshack.us/img160/5088/stir1vi.jpg

http://img160.imageshack.us/img160/1184/monkeysirishlg7ij.jpg

http://img160.imageshack.us/img160/4827/i13581sy.jpg

[sainte-marthe]

Does anyone have the Nast cartoon of the reconstruction-era negro legislature?

[il ragno]

I don't know about John Gilbert, but I think Tenniel is poorly served by comparisons to Dore, who probably deserves his own thread. You have to recall, Dore provided convincing and persuasive illusatrations - hundreds of them - for the Bible, Dante, and Milton!

All of which is not to gainsay Tenniel's achievement.

Behold!

That's probably one of the ten best-known illustrations of all time.

A number of English illustrators and early cartoonists should be included in that thread -Dickens' illustrator (and Edward Gorey's pole star) Phiz, Thomas Rowlandson and the Robinson brothers also.

http://www.fidnet.com/~dap1955/dickens/sample_illustrations/little_dorrit_phiz.gif
Phiz (Hablot Browne)

http://www.victorianweb.org/art/illustration/tenniel/4.jpg
Tenniel

http://www.bpib.com/illustrat/whrobin12.jpg
W. Heath Robinson