Caroline and Erwin Swann Foundation for Caricature
and Cartoon
Cartoon-related Research at the Library of Congress
by Harry L. Katz and Sara W. Duke
For well over a century the Library of Congress has maintained a strong
collecting interest in pictorial humor and satire. As the Library's general
collections have grown over time, so too have the cartoon-related collections
become remarkably rich and comprehensive. Spanning four centuries, they
range from seventeenth-century Dutch political prints to contemporary caricatures
by David Levine, and include drawings for cartoons and comic strips, printed
satires and caricatures, comic books, illustrated satirical journals, and
comic ephemera. The Library acquired these materials through a variety
of sources, including artist's gifts, donations by private collectors,
selective purchases, and copyright registration. These cartoon-related
collections support scholarly research in the field, and form a vital component
of the Library's vast holdings of drawings, prints, and books on all subjects,
from all parts of the world. Thus, while the Library is an excellent resource
for the study of cartoon and caricature, researchers can also explore the
development of the genre within a broader context of graphic art, books,
and journals reflecting a broad range of cultural and historical themes
and issues.
Cartoon-related research at the Library can prove to be a challenge because
cartoons and cartoon-related collections and bibliographic resources are
dispersed among the institution's several Capitol Hill buildings and multiple
divisions. Furthermore, within divisions patrons face an array of finding
aids and bibliographic sources related to their topic, even though a limited
number of collections and individual items are listed in the Library-wide
online catalog system. This article is intended to serve as an introductory
guide to the Library's cartoon-related holdings and resources, with particular
attention given to original cartoon-related prints and drawings preserved
in the Prints and Photographs Division.
Please note that access to some uncataloged or physically fragile collections
cited in this article may be limited to patrons engaged in advanced scholarly
research.
Among its extensive holdings of visual materials, the Prints and Photographs
Division has custody of the largest collection of American political prints
and drawings in existence; one of the finest assemblages of British satires
in North America; more than twenty thousand original cartoon drawings by
several generations of America's best cartoonists and illustrators; and
extensive runs of rare satirical and comic journals from Europe and the
United States. As several cartoon-related pictorial collections, along
with most books and magazines, are stored elsewhere in the Library, the
materials cited in this article have been organized by type or format,
including American political prints, European satires, illustrated periodicals,
political cartoon drawings, comic strips and comic books, and humorous
cartoons and social satires.
Political prints and satires have, quite appropriately, long been a collecting
interest for the congressional library. A particularly large goup of such
works from the late eighteenth century relates to the Revolutionary War
period, including historical prints, satires and allegories by American
artists such as Paul Revere and Amos Doolittle, as well as British publishers
from across the political spectrum. Notable among these are impressions
of Revere's elegantly etched rendering of the illuminated obelisk designed
by John Singleton Copley and erected on Boston Common in celebration of
the repeal of the Stamp Act (1765), as well as Revere's more crude and
sensational portrayal of The Bloody Massacre perpetrated in King
Street Boston (1770).
For
a larger image, click on the picture.
Paul Revere, The Bloody Massacre perpetrated in King Street Boston
on March 5th 1770 by a party of the 29th Regt. Engraving with
watercolor on laid paper. 25.8 x 33.4 cm. (plate). Boston, 1770. LC-USZC4-4913
(color film copy transparency) LC-USZ62-35522 (b&w film copy neg.)
The wealth of Revolutionary War era graphic material preserved in numerous
collections has been brought together in Donald H. Cresswell's book, The
American Revolution in Drawings and Prints. (Washington, DC: Library
of Congress, 1975).
As controversy grew in the United States over the proper form to be given
the new government, cartoons and satires became an increasingly vital and
ubiquitous component of the national public discourse in the formative
years of the young republic. Two of the finest graphic satirists from this
period, James Akin and William Charles, are well represented at the Library.
For example, a rare impression of Akin's virulent attack on President Thomas
Jefferson for conducting secret negotiations with Spain toward the purchase
of West Florida is significant not only as an early presidential satire,
but also as the earliest-known signed satire by Akin.
For
a larger image, click on the picture.
James Akin, The prairie dog sickened at the sting of the hornet
or a diplomatic puppet exhibiting his deceptions. Etching with
watercolor on pale blue-grey laid paper. 28.5 x 40.6 cm. (sheet, trimmed
to within plate). 1804. LC-USZC4-4544 (color film copy transparency)
LC-USZ62-28114 (b&w film copy neg.)
The Library's holdings of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century
woodcuts and engravings are dwarfed by the large numbers of lithographic
satires and cartoons which proliferated during the presidency of Andrew
Jackson, and after. These collections of nineteenth-century social and
political satires, trade cards, advertising labels, and comic ephemera
are unsurpassed due in large part ot the American copyright law of 1870
which mandated that material registrated for copyright protection henceforth
be deposited at the Library of Congress. Under this law, impressions of
printed materials published after 1870 began to be routinely sent to the
Library. Additionally, the Library acquired sporadic holdings of works
published prior to 1870 that had been submitted to regional courthouses.
As a result, the Library has acquired unparalleled numbers of social and
political cartoons dating back to the 1830s. For example, the Library amassed
the largest existing colleciton of prints by Currier & Ives through
copyright registration. Among the more than 3,600 lithographs by this firm
available in the Prints and Photographs Division are numerous satires both
for and against President Abraham Lincoln and racist images from the Darktown
series of cartoons. There are two excellent published sources for these
collections: Currier & Ives: A Catalogue Raisonne. (Detroit:
Gale Research, 1984) and Bernard F. Reilly, Jr., American Political
Prints, 1766-1876: A Catalog of the Collections in the Library of Congress.
(Boston: G.K. Hall, 1991). Complementing these holdings is the Alfred Whital
Stern Collection of Lincolniana. Given to the Library in 1953 and housed
in the Rare Book and Special
Collections Division, it includes pictorial satire and caricature of
the Civil War and Reconstruction periods.
The Library's holdings of non-American political prints and satires are
also noteworthy. In fact, the ten thousand British satires acquired from
the Royal Library at Windsor Castle in 1921 represent the crown jewel in
the Library's political cartoon collections.
For
larger image, click on picture.
James Gillray. Very slippy weather, 1808. Hand-colored etching.
LC-USZC4-5779 (color film copy transparency)
The Windsor Castle caricatures are the nucleus of the British satire holdings,
which are thought to be the finest outside Great Britain. They form a collection
of unsurpassing research value and historical interest not only for the breadth
and quality of the impressions, but also for their close association with
the British royal family. The Prince of Wales (later George IV) created the
collection, with occasional help from his father, George III. The two monarchs
shared a passion for satires and acquired contemporary works, as well as
those from earlier periods. On occasion, when confronted by a particularly
offensive royal caricature, they attempted to suppress distribution of the
offending cartoon by purchasing the entire edition and the plate from which
it was printed. This practice is evidenced by several Windsor caricatures
which bear the inscription "suppressed" within the margin below
the image.
The Windsor caricatures date largely from the period 1780 to 1830, years
dominated by the prodigious talents and prolific efforts of James Gillray
and George Cruikshank. There are 702 Gillray cartoons in the collection,
and 538 by Cruikshank. Other cartoonists amply represented include Matthew
Darley (500), Henry W. Bunbury (281), and Isaac Cruikshank (261). Smaller
groups of works by John Nixon, Richard Newton, G.M. Woodward, and Robert
Dighton, and others are also included. While there are gaps in the collections
(Windsor Castle retained the works by William Hogarth, Thomas Rowlandson,
James Sayers, Robert Seymour, and John Doyle), the Library has acquired
works by these artists from other sources over the years.
An annotated copy of Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires
Preserved in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum serves
as a finding aid for the majority of the collection. More than two thousand
Windsor caricatures are, however, not listed in that catalog. Indices
of these prints, by date, or title when undated, are available in the
Prints and Photographs Division Reading Room. Most of the caricatures
were purchased shortly after they were printed, and have only rarely
been handled or exposed to light. To maintain their often pristine condition,
the Library serves patrons microfilmed images in order to balance research
needs with the preservation needs of the objects themselves.
Acquisition of the Windsor Castle collection of caricatures enriched the
Library's collections of satires from other European nations as well. A
small group of Dutch satires attacking the policies of King James II of
England came with the collection, as did 125 French political prints. The
latter are now housed with more than 200 other French satires acquired
from various sources, most of which date from 1785 to 1840 and document
that nation's bloody struggle through the Revolution and ensuing years
of the Napoleonic empire. The Windsor acquisition also brought to the Library
a group of German lithographic cartoons related to the Revolution of 1848,
which complement other German materials preserved in the Prints and Photographs
Division, including several bound volumes of satires from the Franco-Prussian
War (1871-72).
The Library's collections of historical and contemporary periodicals in
which cartoons and caricatures were published support the American and
European graphic satire collections. These magazines and journals are located
in several different areas. Primarily, however, they will be found in the
Case Collection of the Prints and Photographs Division, the Rare
Book and Special Collections Division, or the general collections.
The Case Collection houses Harper's Weekly, Frank Leslie's
Illustrated Magazine, L'Assiette au Beurre, Le
Rire, Gil Blas illustre, Judge, Puck,
the old Life, The Verdict, and The Masses,
among others. Unfortunately, due to damage done to these journals through
handling over time, some magazines have been withdrawn from service and
may be seen only on microfilm. Patrons wishing to see Americana, La
Caricature, and L'Eclipse will find them in the Rare
Book and Special Collections Division. Popular magazines such as The
New Yorker, Punch, and Vanity Fair are
available on a limited basis through the Main Reading Room. Again, access
to many of these illustrated magazines has been restricted to preserve
and protect fragile or damaged issues, although microfilm copies of most
of them are available in the Library's Microform Reading Room.
Historically, many of the most spectacular additions to the Library's
cartoon drawings collections have been acquired thorugh artist's gifts.
The Library rarely seeks to acquire the entire output of an artist, but
rather to establish a representative selection of work by the leading cartoonists
from each generation. Toward this end, generations of notable American
artists and cartoonists and their heirs have donated their work to the
nation's library, with the result that nearly twenty thousand original
drawings will be found in the Cartoon Drawings, the Cabinet of American
Illustration, The New Yorker Cartoon Collection, and related
holdings in the Prints and Photographs Division.
The Cartoon Drawing filing series contains nearly eight thousand original
drawings for cartoons published by a a distinguished roster of American
cartoonists. The collection spans more than a hundred and fifty years,
from the satires of early nineteenth-century artist David Claypoole Johnston
to recent caricatures by Edward Sorel and political cartoons by Patrick
Oliphant and Paul Conrad. The vast majority of works in the collection
were given to the Library by the artists themselves. Large gifts comprised
of several hundred editorial cartoon drawings represent Homer Davenport,
Felix Mahoney, Clifford Berryman, Herbert Johnson, Rollin Kirby, Edwin
Marcus, and Bill Mauldin. These are complemented by smaller groups of works
by Daniel Fitzpatrick, Rube Goldberg, Reg Manning, Lute Pease, John Fischetti,
Ollie Harrington, Oscar Cesare and Al Frueh among others. To date, more
than five hundred American cartoonists are represented in the collection.
Large groups of works by American political cartoonists---Thomas Nast and
John McCutcheon--are in the Cabinet of American Illustration.
Works by foreign cartoonists complement the concentration of drawings
by artists from the United States. Mexican-born caricaturist Miguel Covarrubias,
for example, is represented by several hundred drawings. Thirty-nine drawings
by Iranian political cartoonist Ardeshir Mohasses, produced in exile during
the late 1970s, take a devastatingly ironic look at life for the common
people in Iran during the final, bloody years of the repressive reign of
Shah Reza Pahlavi. This entire series has been reproduced in Life
in Iran: The Library of Congress Drawings by Ardeshir Mohasses (Washington,
DC: Mage Publishers, 1994).
The twentieth-century European satires also include a unique collection
of cartoons originally held in a German propaganda archive. Following the
defeat of the Nazi regime during World War II, materials deemed militaristic
or propagandistic were confiscated by American military authorities from
official Nazi archives and publicity agencies. The bulk of this material
was once housed in Munich at the Rehse-Archiv fur Zeitgeschichte und Publizistik,
and is now available in the Prints and Photographs Division. Included are
anti-American, anti-English, anti-French, anti-Russian, and anti-Semitic
cartoons published in various sources, as well as a large group of original
drawings by leading Nazi cartoonist Josef Plank, known as "Seppla".
These items, along with many other cartoon-related collections listed in
this article, are described in Special Collections in the Library
of Congress: A Selective Guide compiled by Annette Melville. (Washington,
DC: Library of Congress, 1980).
The acquisition of several major private collections has also greatly
expanded the Library's coverage of pictorial satire. In 1974, the Library
received the Caroline
and Erwin Swann Collection of Caricature and Cartoon. During the 1960s
and early 1970s, New York advertising executive Erwin Swann developed what
was then one of the finest collections of cartoons, caricatures, and illustrations
in private hands. The Swann collection contains more than 2,000 drawings,
prints, and paintings spanning the years 1780 to 1975, and includes works
by a variety of American and European artists and illustrators. For an
in-depth description of the Swann Collection and related programs see INKS:
Cartoon and Comic Art Studies, 1:2 (May 1994).
In fall 1993, the Library of Congress acquired the Ben and Beatrice Goldstein
Foundation Collection of twentieth-century prints and drawings. The Goldstein
Collection is particularly strong in images related to themes of social
and economic injustice, war, poverty, and politics. Among the two thousand
items in the collection are a number of original drawings by artists who
worked for the radical leftists journal The Masses just prior
to World War I. Also included in the Goldstein Collection are numerous
political cartoons drawn for the Daily World by Oliver Harrington
and Fred Wright. Currently, access to the Goldstein Collection is restricted
to those engaged in advanced research. An exhibition, Life
of the People: Realist Prints & Drawings from the Ben & Beatrice Goldstein
Collection, selected images from the Goldstein Collection is
currently available online.
For
a larger image, click on the picture.
Robert Minor, Pittsburgh, 1916. Lithographic crayon and india
ink. Published in The Masses, 8 (August 1916). Ben and Beatrice
Goldstein Collection. LC-USZC4-4903 (color film copy transparency) LC-USZ62-111306
(b&w film copy neg.)
The Jack Kapp Collection of cartoons and comic strips is housed in the
Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division (several objects
are framed and on exhibit in the Recorded Sound Reading Room). The Kapp
Collection contains about seventy-five drawings, most for editorial cartoons,
assembled in the 1940s by Jack Kapp, president of Decca Records, and donated
to the Library upon his death by his widow. The cartoons deal with the
sound recording industry, spanning several decades of the phonograph industry
and American social life as it relates to recorded sound. Cartoonists represented
include Rube Goldberg, H.T. Webster, Gluyas Williams, L.M. Glackens, Burt
Thomas, Fred Packer, Clifford Berryman, Jack Markow, and David Breger.
In addition to political caricatures and cartoons, the Library has amassed
a particularly fine collection of original drawings for comic strips. Most
were acquired with the Caroline and Erwin Swann Collection of Caricature
and Cartoon, which amply records the early history and later development
of the American newspaper comic strip. In summer 1992, the Library acquired
the George Sturman Collection of cartoon art, which contains more than
250 original comic strips from 1896 through 1980. Addition of the Sturman
Collection has added depth and quality to the Library's cartoon holdings.
Drawings from the Sturman Collection are available through the Cartoon
Drawing filing series. Artist's gifts have also enhanced the comic strip
collections. For example, in 1954, Pogo creator Walt Kelly
donated one hundred and thirty original strips and panels to the Library,
while Garry B. Trudeau, creator of Doonesbury, periodically
adds to the body of his work housed in the Prints and Photographs Division.
The Newspaper and Current Periodical
Reading Room is home to the Library's extensive Comic Book Collection,
which includes more than four thousand comic titles and contains almost
one hundred thousand individual issues. The earliest comic book in the
collection is a 1938 issue of Action Comics. Other notable
titles are: Adventure Comics, Batman, Archie, Dennis
the Menace, Doctor Strange, The Flash, Superman,
and Tarzan. The Newspaper and Current Periodical Reading
Room holdings contain underground titles as well, such as Robert Crumb's Best
Buy Comics, Blab, Middle Class Fantasies,
and Trailer Trash. Comic books from Chile, Italy, Sweden,
the Philippines, Germany, Turkey, Senegal and Mexico are also in the
collection.
Most of the Comic Book
Collection comes to the Library through copyright deposit, with occasional
gifts supplementing this source. Given the volume of production of this
kind of work, the Library does not keep every comic book which comes
through the Copyright Office, especially single issues. The Reading Room
maintains a card catalog listing holdings alphabetically by date and
the Newspaper and Current Periodical Reading Room has been active in
making online records available as well. Due to the fragility of the
collection, patrons are not permitted to browse through the material.
For those patrons who do not receive permission to view the comic books, color
microfiche issues are available in the Microform Reading Room of
the Jefferson Building for such DC titles as Action Comics, Adventure
Comics, All Star Comics, Batman, and Superman for
the Golden Age of Comics, 1939-1949.
The Newspaper and Current Periodical Reading Room also houses microfilm
collections of historical and contemporary American and European newspapers.
Patrons researching the history of comic strips, political cartoons and
newspaper illustration will find the microfilm an invaluable tool, since
many original newspapers have been destroyed or have deteriorated. Microfilm
editions of the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Washington
Post, and Washington Star are kept in open files, while
other newspapers on microfilm can be retrieved twelve reels at a time.
The Library keeps published copies of its newspaper holdings until microfilm
reels arrive and are cataloged, so that patrons have access to current
newspapers as well.
Original drawings for humorous cartoons and social satires are found in
the Swann Collection, Cabinet of American Illustration, and The New
Yorker Cartoon Collection, all of which are housed in the Prints
and Photographs Division. American cartoonists and illustrators of the
1920s and 1930s are particularly well represented in the Swann Collection,
through works by John Held Jr., Ralph Barton, Rea Irvin, Anne Harriet Fish,
Russell Patterson, and Peggy Bacon. The collection also includes a fine
group of watercolor and gouache covers for Vanity Fair and
cartoon drawings for The New Yorker by Peter Arno, Whitney
Darrow, and others.
The Cabinet of American Illustration was the brainchild of William Patten,
a former art editor for Harper's Magazine during the 1880s
and 1890s. Patten's idea was to create a national collection of original
works of art documenting what he and others considered the golden age of
American illustration that took place from the 1880s until the outbreak
of World War I. In summer 1932, Patten and Librarian of Congress Dr. Herbert
Putnam agreed that such a collection would be a great asset to the nation,
and that the Library would be an appropriate repository. In return for
travel expenses and a modest daily allowance, Patten solicited donations
to the Library from selected American illustrators or their heirs. The
Cabinet proved a success, and over the course of four years, until Patten's
deteriorating health slowed the project, the Library amassed a collection
of four thousand drawings by the nation's finest illustrators. Preserved
in the Cabinet are representative works by Arthur Burdett Frost, Alice
Barber Stephens, Charles Dana Gibson, Charlotte Harding, Edwin Abbey, and
Jessie Wilcox Smith, among others.
Although the Cabinet is devoted to the full range of the illustrator's
art, cartoon and comic sketches abound. For instance, A. B. Frost's son
John gave 125 examples of his father's work, including characteristically
comic drawings portraying city and country bumpkins and their animal counterparts
in varying stages of alarm, amusement and befuddlement. Rose O'Neill, creator
of the comic strip Kewpies, is represented in the Cabinet
by a number of her gentle and genteel social cartoons poking fun at American
family life and the wealthy. Her stylish Art Noveau drawings complement
the seventy-five works given by Charles Dana Gibson, whose turn-of-the
century "Gibson girl" defined the ideal image of femine beauty
for a generation of American men and women. Other cartoonist-illustrators
represented in the Cabinet include Edward Kemble, Frederick Church, John
Held, Thomas Worth, and Frederick Opper.
In 1960 the Prints and Photographs Division requested original cartoons
from artists who regularly submitted their work to The New Yorker in
order to build up its collection of images of "social significance." Thirty
artists responded by submitting their work for deposit or gift between
1960 and 1970. Interpretations of social significance varied, but many
of the cartoons deal with such events as the Depression, World War II,
politics, and space travel. Other images deal with more general issues,
such as relations between married couples or children and adults. In an
attempt to donate images of social signficance, some artists did not limit
their cartoons to those published in The New Yorker, but submitted
illustrations published in Saturday Review, Collier's,
and PM, as well as syndicated images.
Most artists donated a small sampling of their work (fifteen to fifty
images) while others enthusiastically donated hundreds of cartoons, often
over several years. The collection is rich in the works of Peter Arno,
Perry Barlow, Whitney Darrow, Chon Day, Dana Fradon, Charles E. Martin,
George Price, Mischa Richter, and Charles Saxon. Roberta MacDonald and
Doris Matthews are also represented in The New Yorker Cartoon
Collection. Artists and their heirs have continued to add to the collection,
and at present it comprises more than three thousand cartoons. Most of The
New Yorker Cartoon Collection is currently available only to those
engaged in advanced scholarly research.
As suggested at the outset of this article, the Library's cartoon-related
collections are extensive and diverse. They are also physically scattered
throughout the institution's various divisions, and listed on a wide variety
of electronic and printed finding aids and bibliographic databases. Some
collections, including the Ben and Beatrice Goldstein Foundation Collection
and The New Yorker Cartoon collections in the Prints and Photographs
Division, contain materials that are currently available only to qualified
scholars. Anyone wishing to research a particular collection, item, or
subject is encouraged to contact the appropriate division(s) for specific
information on access and availability, and, when necessary, an appointment.
Prior planning, and using this essay as a preliminary guide, should ensure
that researchers will successfully pursue their cartoon-related studies
at the Library of Congress.
A version of this article appeared in Inks: Cartoon and Comic Art Studies,
vol. 1, no. 3 (November 1994). It has been updated with current information.
For information, email us at: swann@loc.gov
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