Online Exhibition
James Gillray (1757-1815) was among the most popular,
prolific, revered, and reviled print satirists of
the golden age of English caricature, the late eighteenth
century. He took special delight in attacking the
excesses of the royal family. Here, he caustically
depicts King George III, Queen Charlotte, and the
Prince of Wales (later George IV) gorging themselves
on the national treasury, labelled "John Bull's Blood."
The title, "Monstrous Craws," refers to the rapidly
expanding gullets dangling from the royal necks, probably
inspired by the recent public display in London of
three "wild-born human beings," who apparently exhibited
such features. The Library acquired this print with
almost 10,000 other English satires from the Royal
Library at Windsor Castle in 1921.
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James Gillray,
MONSTROUS CRAWS,
at a New Coalition Feast,
etching with watercolor, 1787
Library of Congress purchase, 1921
Prints and
Photographs Division (10)
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Charles Dana Gibson,
The Weaker Sex,
ink over pencil with scraping out on board, 1903
Gift of Charles Dana Gibson, 1935
Prints and
Photographs Division (1)
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Illustrator Charles Dana Gibson's (1867-1944) glamorous,
winsome "Gibson girls" set the standard for female
beauty in turn-of-the-century America. Here, however,
Gibson parodies his own creations, portraying his
traditionally passive paradigms of womanhood as playfully
assertive giants toying with a minuscule man.
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Mexican caricaturist Miguel Covarrubias (1904-1957)
created this derisive group portrait of the three
most powerful European dictators and Huey Long, United
States senator from Louisiana, in 1933 for his celebrated
series of "Impossible Interviews" published in Vanity
Fair. Born in Mexico City, Covarrubias showed
early artistic talent and in 1923, on a scholarship
from the Mexican government, left for New York City,
where he quickly gained a reputation as an accomplished
caricaturist. By 1925, he had become one of Vanity
Fair's principal contributors and as renowned
as the men and women he drew. In his introduction
to Covarrubias's first book, The Prince of Wales
and Other Famous Americans (1925), performing
arts critic Carl Van Vechten wrote, "At the present
moment, Miguel Covarrubias is about as well known
in New York as it would be possible for anyone to
be."
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Miguel Covarrubias,
Impossible interviews
- no. 18:
Herr Adolf Hitler and Huey S. "Hooey" Long
versus Josef Stalin and Benito Mussolini,
gouache on board, 1933
Published in Vanity Fair, June 1933
Miguel Covarrubias / Vanity Fair
© Conde Nast Publications, Inc.
Caroline and Erwin Swann Collection
of Caricature and Cartoon
Prints and
Photographs Division (2)
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Garry Trudeau,
"I really didn't want
you anyway,
you stupid mourning cloak,"
ink, white out, pencil and
tonal film overlay on paper, 1971
Copyright 1971 Universal Press Syndicate
and G. B. Trudeau
DOONESBURY © G. B. Trudeau
Gift of
Garry B. Trudeau, 1988
Prints and
Photographs Division (3)
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For more than twenty-five years Doonesbury
creator Garry B. Trudeau (b. 1948) has developed an
evolving and engaging cast of characters into an effective
vehicle for some of the most trenchant social and
political satire in American newspaper publishing.
His persistent and provocative commentaries on prominent
politicians and controversial social issues have prompted
some newspapers to print them on the editorial page
rather than in the comics section.
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During the 1960s, extensive news coverage of the
Vietnam War contributed to growing antiwar sentiment
in the United States. The strength of that sentiment
divided the nation and the Democratic Party and convinced
President Lyndon Baines Johnson to withdraw from the
1968 election campaign. The tensions of the period
are reflected in two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Paul
Szep's unforgettable image of LBJ haunted by the ghosts
of dead American soldiers. To create the drawing Szep
used the scratchboard technique, in which the artist
scrapes away black ink from a white surface, simulating
the strong contrasts of a wood engraving with a fraction
of the time, effort, and expense.
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Paul Szep,
[Vietnam Specters],
India ink with scraping out on
scratchboard, 1967.
Published in The Boston Globe, 1967
Caroline and Erwin Swann Collection of
Caricature and Cartoon
Prints and
Photographs Division (4)
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Contemporary cartoonists who know the history of
their profession sometimes seek inspiration in the
works of past masters. In the wake of the Watergate
scandal, Edward Sorel (b. 1929) portrayed President
Richard Nixon as a tyrannical monarch. The motif was
first used in America by the British-born cartoonist
William Charles (1776-1820), who immigrated to the
United States in 1806. During the War of 1812 Charles,
who quickly took up the cause of his adopted land,
produced this austere and amusing parody of Senator
Josiah Quincy of Massachusetts, "Grand Master of the
noble order of the Two Cod Fishes." Quincy was highly
criticized at the time for arguing against war with
England and soon resigned from Congress in the face
of such vehement attacks.
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Edward Sorel,
Milhous I: Lord of San
Clemente,
Duke of Key Biscayne, Captain of Watergate.,
India ink and watercolor on
paper and board, 1974
Published in Rolling Stone, March 14,
1974
Caroline and Erwin Swann Collection of Caricature
and Cartoon
Prints and
Photographs Division (5)
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William Charles,
Josiah the First,
etching with watercolor on
paper, ca. 1812-13
Prints and
Photographs Division (12)
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Arthur Burdett Frost (1851-1928) is remembered as
one of the great comic draughtsmen in the history
of American illustration. Best known for affectionate,
humorous portraits of rural characters, both human
and animal, he published work in such popular periodicals
as Harper's Monthly, Life,
Collier's, Puck, Scribner's,
and Harper's Weekly. He also illustrated
more than ninety books by such authors as Lewis Carroll,
Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, and Theodore Roosevelt.
Frost achieved widespread critical and popular success
with his masterful, inventive illustrations for Joel
Chandler Harris's classic series of "Uncle Remus"
books, beginning with Uncle Remus and His Friends
(1892). Early in Frost's career, author F. Hopkinson
Smith wrote of his drawings, "Only a dot and a line,
and yet there is a whole volume of anxiety, alarm,
misery, and fright expressed in this same dot and
line--one no larger than the head of a pin, and the
other no longer than its point. That is what I call
a genius."
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Arthur Burdett Frost,
He made some hootch and
tried it on the dog,
India ink over pencil with
scraping out on board, 1921
Caroline and Erwin Swann Collection of
Caricature and Cartoon
Prints and
Photographs Division (7)
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George Luks,
"That man Clay was an
ass. It's better to be
President than to be right!",
lithograph, 1899
Published in The Verdict,
March 13, 1899
Copyright registration deposit
Prints and
Photographs Division (15)
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Puck and Judge were the
leading satirical weeklies in the last decades of
the nineteenth century, and by the 1890s their editors
agreed on most things: that William Jenning Bryan's
silver party was dangerous and William McKinley should
be president; that monopolies were bad, but business
was good: and that American workingmen should be content
with their lot. A smaller, rival journal called The
Verdict disagreed, however, and became an early
forum for cartoons that portrayed labor as the victim
of capital, and capitalists as arrogant, greedy monsters
preying on the common people. Here, George B. Luks
(1867-1933), who would soon gain fame as a member
of the Ashcan School of American art, plays on Henry
Clay's old adage that "it is better to be right than
president" (through several unsuccessful election
campaigns, Clay may have been right, but he was never
president). Luks portrays the infamous Republican
Party boss "Dollar" Mark Hanna sneering to McKinley,
"That Man Clay Was an Ass. It's Better to be President
than to be Right!"
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Thomas Nast (1840-1902) was the dominant political
cartoonist in America during the second half of the
nineteenth century. His Civil War and Reconstruction
drawings for Harper's Weekly earned him
a national reputation, and the series of cartoons
he drew between 1869 and 1872 exposing the corrupt
"Tweed Ring" of New York City's Tammany Hall contributed
to the group's ultimate indictment and became a landmark
in the history of journalistic crusades against corruption
in government. The Library of Congress collections
include several original woodblocks engraved by Nast
for the Tweed series including this one, considered
among his most masterful works.
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Thomas Nast,
A group of vultures waiting
for the storm to
"blow over."-- "Let us Prey.",
wood engraving, 1871
Published in Harper's Weekly,
September 23, 1871
Prints and
Photographs Division (17)
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Al Hirschfeld,
The Stage Door Canteen
Reopens,
ink on paper mounted on
layered board, 1944
Anonymous gift, 1997
Prints and
Photographs Division (19)
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Al Hirschfeld (b. 1903), America's foremost performing
arts caricaturist and illustrator, has covered the
New York theater scene for more than sixty years.
His drawing of the Stage Door Canteen is at once a
fine example of the artist's high style and an exuberant
evocation of night life in New York city during World
War II. The Stage Door Canteen was established by
the American Theatre Wing and the USO during the war
to entertain soldiers free of charge. The image complements
the Library's extensive holdings of graphic materials
related to the home front and related works by such
fellow caricaturists as Miguel Covarrubias, Al Frueh,
and Kenneth Chamberlain, among others. The bearded
sailor at the right with his back to the viewer is
Hirschfeld's self-portrait.
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The jaunty spirit of the Jazz Age came to life in
the work of influential illustrator John Held, Jr.
(1889-1958). During the 1920s, his colorful portrayals
of flippant "flapper" girls and jaunty "Joe College"
boys appeared in such magazines as Judge,
The New Yorker, College Humor,
Harper's Bazaar. His designs, such as
this magazine cover depicting a coolly coquettish
girl and a gawky, grinning guy, helped delineate a
carefree, confident image of American society. Held
also wrote and illustrated numerous books, designed
costumes and sets for musical reviews, and created
comic strips including Oh! Margy (later
Merely Margy), Joe Prep,
and Rah Rah Rosalie. Examples of his
graphic work form part of the Library's Cabinet of
American Illustration, a national collection of original
drawings by generations of leading artists, illustrators,
and cartoonists.
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John Held,
The Girl Who Gave Him
the Cold Shoulder,
gouache on board, ca. 1925
Cabinet of American Illustration
Prints and
Photographs Division (8)
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Peggy Bacon,
The Quest of Beauty,
India ink and black crayon on
paper, ca. 1936-41
Caroline and Erwin Swann Collection of
Caricature and Cartoon
Prints and
Photographs Division (11)
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Peggy Bacon (1895-1987), earned her place as a preeminent
American caricaturist with the 1934 publication Off
With Their Heads!, the result of a Guggenheim
Fellowship. In that same year she began another series
of caricatures for the publication New Republic,
in which she portrayed prominent Washington, D.C.
individuals. In The Quest of Beauty,
Bacon's delicate ink and crayon work belies her sardonic
message.
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Oliver Harrington (1912-1995) was among the first
African Americans to receive international recognition
as a cartoonist. Because of his controversial political
beliefs and extended self-imposed exile abroad, however,
his work has only recently begun to receive critical
attention. Harrington received a bachelor's degree
from Yale University, studied drawing at the National
Academy of Design, and soon found work as a cartoonist
for The Amsterdam News, a Harlem newspaper.
There, in 1935, he created his best-known character,
"Bootsie," for a cartoon panel entitled Dark
Laughter, which became a forum for his insightful
and humorous observations on relationships between
blacks and whites, and life within an urban African-American
community. In 1951, he moved to Paris, following apparent
legal difficulties stemming from his outspokenness
on race issues. Ten years later he relocated again
to East Berlin, where he remained for the rest of
his life. Throughout this period Harrington continued
to contribute cartoons to the African-American newspaper
The Pittsburgh Courier and the socialist
The Daily World, as well as the East
German satirical publication Eulenspiegel.
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Oliver W. Harrington,
Dark Laughter: "The teacher
says that everyone can git to be president. Then how
come the whole class falls out laughin' when I tell
'em that's my dream?"
Crayon, ink, blue pencil, white out and
pencil on paper, 1960
Caroline and Erwin Swann Memorial Fund purchase, 1995
Prints and
Photographs Division (13)
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Rose O'Neill,
Fortune,
ink over pencil and blue pencil with
scraping out on paper, 1903 (6)
Published in Puck, April 15, 1903
Cabinet of American Illustration
Prints and
Photographs Division (6)
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Rose Cecil O'Neill (1874-1944) was one of the few
women to achieve extraordinary financial success and
professional independence in early twentieth-century
American cartooning. This drawing, which makes gently
wicked fun of the largely male readership of Puck
magazine, is representative of her distinctively bold,
yet fluid, Art Nouveau-inspired style. Celebrated
illustrator, author, and creator of the Kewpie doll,
O'Neill began her career at the age of fifteen and
by 1895 had sold drawings to the top humorous publications
of the day, including Puck, Judge,
Life, and Harper's. In 1909,
she introduced readers of The Ladies'Home Journal
to "The Kewpies," cherubic cartoon characters that
soon became a national craze that spun off lucrative
contracts for dolls and other merchandise, as well
as a popular syndicated Sunday comic strip. Such wealth
enabled O'Neill, with her sister, Callista, to hold
salons in her Greenwich Village studio and create
experimental drawings unlike the work for which she
is usually known. Critics praised her one-woman exhibition
of these drawings, held in Paris in 1921.
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