A Selection of Cartoons from Puck

Chapter 15: “A SAIL! A SAIL!”

Open in WeRead

Explore more books like this:

About This Book

This collection gathers satirical pictorial essays and caricatures originally published in a humor magazine, pairing sharp visual exaggeration with allegorical scenes to comment on political and social issues of the late nineteenth century. An introductory essay explains the artist’s German-influenced approach that fuses caricature and cartooning into dramatic parables, and the plates reproduce large, detailed cartoons with accompanying captions and an index to aid interpretation. The volume emphasizes visual wit, topical parody, and the interplay of character drawing and symbolic narrative.

“A SAIL! A SAIL!”

PUCK, July 2nd, 1884.

This simple but effective cartoon hardly requires any further elucidation than is afforded by the date of its publication. It appeared on July 2nd, 1884, immediately after the nomination of Mr. Blaine at the Republican Convention at Chicago, and the consequent bolt of the Independent Republicans and so-called Mugwumps. With reference to the appearance in the picture of Mr. John Kelly in the attitude of a hostile savage, we need only say that the readiness of the Tammany Hall of that day to stab the Democratic Party in the back whenever it furthered its own ends by so doing was something that was more than suspected then, and that was conclusively proved in the first Cleveland and Harrison campaign.

(larger)