1883 HAND COLORED THOMAS NAST SANTA CLAUS HARPER’S BAZAR CHRISTMAS ENGRAVING

When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.

1883 HAND COLORED THOMAS NAST SANTA CLAUS HARPER’S BAZAR CHRISTMAS ENGRAVING:
$1250.00

Large poster-sized (16 1/4\" x 22 1/2\") wood engraving, \"Santa Claus, Is not a creature stirring, not even a mouse?\" from a January 6, 1883, issue of Harper’s Bazar magazine. This is an original nineteenth century hand coloreddouble page centerfold woodblock engraving by artist Thomas Nast, the creator of our modern graphic conception of Santa Claus.

Our original prints are hand colored in-house by a professional colorist using premium water color paints and pencils in the English Victoriantradition. The subject matter is carefully researched to ensure authentic period coloring.It is a detailed process that often requires the use of a magnifying glass.

The prices of our hand colored prints are determined based on a variety of factors including the condition and scarcity of the original print and the complexity and amount of time it takes to finish the particular coloring project. Thomas Nast Santa Claus centerfolds from Harper\'s Bazar magazine are harder to find than the centerfolds published in Harper\'s Weekly.

We also offer hand coloring services for prints provided by customers at the rate of $50 per hour.

We have been collecting Harper\'s Weekly graphic art for over 40 years and only offer original fullissuesand authentic individual engravings. Please message us with any questions.

LIKE THIS ITEM? BUT DON\'T LIKE THE PRICE? HOW MUCH DO YOU WANT TO PAY? MAKE US AN OFFER!

Thomas NastFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaJump to navigationJump to searchThomas NastPhotograph of Nast byNapoleon Sarony, taken inUnion Square,New York CityBornSeptember 27, 1840
Landau,Rhine Palatinate,Kingdom of Bavaria,German Germany)DiedDecember 7, style=\"margin: 0.5em 0px;\">Thomas Nast(/næst/;German:[nast]; September 27, 1840– December 7, 1902) was a German-born Americancaricaturistandeditorial cartoonistoften considered to be the \"Father of the American Cartoon\".[1]He was a critic ofDemocraticRepresentative\"Boss\" Tweedand theTammany HallDemocratic partypolitical machine. Among his notable works were the creation of the modern version ofSanta Claus(based on the traditional German figures ofSankt NikolausandWeihnachtsmann) and the political symbol of the elephant for theRepublican Party(GOP). Contrary to popular belief, Nast did not createUncle Sam(the male personification of the United States Federal Government),Columbia(the female personification of American values), or theDemocraticdonkey,[2]though he did popularize these symbols through his artwork. Nast was associated with the magazineHarper\'s Weeklyfrom 1859 to 1860 and from 1862 until 1886.

Contents

1Early life and education
2Career
- 2.1Style and themes
- 2.2Campaign against the Tweed Ring
- 2.3Party politics
- 2.4AfterHarper\'s Weekly
3Legacy
- 3.1Thomas Nast Award
- 3.2Thomas Nast Prize
- 3.3\"Nasty\"
- 3.4Museums
4Notes
5References
6External links

Early life and education[edit]

Nast was born in military barracks inLandau, Germany (now inRhineland-Palatinate), as his father was a trombonist in theBavarian9th regiment band.[3]Nast was the last child of Appolonia (néeAbriss) and Joseph Thomas Nast. He had an older sister Andie; two other siblings had died before he was born. His father held political convictions that put him at odds with the Bavarian government, so in 1846, Joseph Nast left Landau, enlisting first on a Frenchman-of-warand subsequently on an American ship.[4]He sent his wife and children toNew York City, and at the end of his enlistment in 1850, he joined them there.[5]

Nast attended school in New York City from the age of six to 14. He did poorly at his lessons, but his passion for drawing was apparent from an early age. In 1854, at the age of 14, he was enrolled for about a year of study with Alfred Fredericks andTheodore Kaufmann, and then at the school of theNational Academy of Design.[6][7]In 1856, he started working as a draftsman forFrank Leslie\'s Illustrated Newspaper.[8]His drawings appeared for the first time inHarper\'s Weeklyon March 19, 1859,[9]when he illustrated a report exposing police corruption; Nast was 18 years old at that of Thomas Nast

In February 1860, he went to England for theNew York Illustrated Newsto depict one of the major sporting events of the era, theprize fightbetween the AmericanJohn C. Heenanand the EnglishThomas Sayers[11]sponsored byGeorge Wilkes, publisher ofWilkes\'Spirit of the Times. A few months later, as artist forThe Illustrated London News, he joinedGaribaldiin Italy. Nast\'s cartoons and articles about the Garibaldimilitary campaigntounify Italycaptured the popular imagination in the U.S. In February 1861, he arrived back in New York. In September of that year, he married Sarah Edwards, whom he had met two years earlier.

He left theNew York Illustrated Newsto work again, briefly, forFrank Leslie\'s Illustrated News.[12]In 1862, he became a staff illustrator forHarper\'s Weekly. In his first years withHarper\'s, Nast became known especially for compositions that appealed to the sentiment of the viewer. An example is \"Christmas Eve\" (1862), in which a wreath frames a scene of a soldier\'s praying wife and sleeping children at home; a second wreath frames the soldier seated by a campfire, gazing longingly at small pictures of his loved ones.[13]One of his most celebrated cartoons was \"Compromise with the South\" (1864), directed against those in the North who opposed the prosecution of theAmerican Civil War.[14]He was known for drawing battlefields inborderandsouthern states. These attracted great attention, and Nast was referred to by PresidentAbraham Lincolnas \"our best recruiting sergeant\".[15]

After the war, Nast strongly opposed theReconstructionpolicy of PresidentAndrew Johnson, whom he depicted in a series of trenchant cartoons that marked \"Nast\'s great beginning in the field of caricature\".[16]

Style and themes[edit]The American River Ganges, a cartoon by Thomas Nast showing bishops attacking public schools, with connivance of\"Boss\" Tweed.Harper\'s Weekly, September 30, 1871.September 1868 Nast Cartoon \"This is a White Man\'s Government!\" showing left to right a stereotyped Irishman, an ex-Confederatesoldier (Nathan B. Forrest), and a financier (August Belmont) \"triumphing\" over a prostrateUSCTsoldier on the ground.The Usual Irish Way of Doing Things, a cartoon by Thomas Nast depicting a drunken Irishman lighting a powder keg. Published inHarper\'s Weekly, September 2, 1871.1871 Cartoon: \"Move on! Has the Native American no rights that the naturalized American is bound to respect?\" An ironic Nast Cartoon underlines that, while naturalized foreigners had the vote,Native Americanshad no vote, as they were not considered United States citizens, which was not remedied until 1924.

Nast\'s cartoons frequently had numerous sidebars and panels with intricate subplots to the main cartoon. A Sunday feature could provide hours of entertainment and highlight social causes. After 1870, Nast favored simpler compositions featuring a strong central image.[6]He based his likenesses on photographs.[6]

In the early part of his career, Nast used a brush andink washtechnique to draw tonal renderings onto the wood blocks that would be carved into printing blocks by staff engravers. The boldcross-hatchingthat characterized Nast\'s mature style resulted from a change in his method that began with a cartoon of June 26, 1869, which Nast drew onto the wood block using a pencil, so that the engraver was guided by Nast\'s linework. This change of style was influenced by the work of the English illustratorJohn Tenniel.[17]

A recurring theme in Nast\'s cartoons is racism and anti-Catholicism. Nast was baptized a Catholic at the Saint Maria Catholic Church in Landau,[18]and for a time received Catholic education in New York City.[19]When Nast converted to Protestantism remains unclear, but his conversion was likely formalized upon his marriage in 1861. (The family were practicing Episcopalians at St. Peter\'s in Morristown.) Nast considered the Catholic Church to be a threat to Americanvalues. According to his biographer, Fiona Deans Halloran, Nast was \"intensely opposed to the encroachment of Catholic ideas into public education\".[20]When Tammany Hall proposed a new tax to support parochial Catholic schools, he was outraged. His savage 1871 cartoon \"The American River Ganges\", depicts Catholic bishops, guided by Rome, as crocodiles moving in to attack American school children as Irish politicians prevent their escape. He portrayed public support for religious education as a threat to democratic government. The authoritarian papacy in Rome, ignorant Irish Americans, and corrupt politicians at Tammany Hall figured prominently in his work. Nast favored nonsectarian public education that mitigated differences of religion and ethnicity. However, in 1871 Nast andHarper\'s Weeklysupported the Republican-dominated board of education in Long Island in requiring students to hear passages from theKing James Bible, and his educational cartoons sought to raise anti-Catholic and anti-Irish fervor among Republicans and independents.[21]

Nast expressedanti-Irish sentimentby depicting them as violent drunks. He used Irish people as a symbol of mob violence, machine politics, and the exploitation of immigrants by political bosses.[22]Nast\'s emphasis on Irish violence may have originated in scenes he witnessed in his youth. Nast was physically small and had experienced bullying as a child.[23]In the neighborhood in which he grew up, acts of violence by the Irish against black Americans were commonplace.[24]

In 1863, he witnessed theNew York City draft riotsin which a mob composed mainly of Irish immigrants burned the Colored Orphan Asylum to the ground. His experiences may explain his sympathy for black Americans and his \"antipathy to what he perceived as the brutish, uncontrollable Irish thug\".[23]An 1876 Nast cartoon combined a caricature ofCharles Francis Adams Srwith anti-Irish sentiment and anti-Fenianship.[25]

October 26, 1874, Nast cartoon \"The Union as it was...This is a White Mans Government....the Lost cause...Worse than Slavery\"Thomas Nast\'s cartoon \"Third Term Panic\" {Inspired by the tale of aThe Ass in the Lion\'s Skin} and a rumor of President Grant seeking a third term, the Democratic donkey aka \"Caesarism\" panics the other political animals-including a Republican Partyelephantat the left1879 Nast cartoon: \"Red gentleman (Indian) to yellow gentleman (Chinese) \"Pale face \'fraid you crowd him out, as he did me.\" In the left background an African American remarks \"My day is coming\".

In general, his political cartoons supportedAmerican IndiansandChinese Americans. He advocated theabolition of slavery, opposedracial segregation, and deplored the violence of theKu Klux Klan. In one of his more famous cartoons, the phrase \"Worse than Slavery\" is printed on acoat of armsdepicting a despondent black family holding their dead child; in the background is alynchingand a schoolhouse destroyed by arson. Two members of the Ku Klux Klan andWhite League,paramilitaryinsurgent groups in theReconstruction-eraSouth, shake hands in their mutually destructive work against black Americans.

\"Colored Rule in a Reconstructed(?) State\",Harper\'s Weekly, March 14, 1874. By this point, Nast had given up on racial idealism and caricatured black legislators as incompetent buffoons.

Despite Nast\'s championing of minorities, Morton Keller writes that later in his career \"racist stereotypy of blacks began to appear: comparable to those of the Irish—though in contrast with the presumably more highly civilized Chinese.\"[26]

Nast introduced into American cartoons the practice of modernizing scenes from Shakespeare for a political purpose.

Nast also brought his approach to bear on the usually prosaic almanac business, publishing an annualNast\'s Illustrated Almanacfrom 1871 to 1875.The Green Bagrepublished all five of Nast\'s almanacs in the 2011 edition of itsAlmanac & Reader.[27]

Campaign against the Tweed Ring[edit]The \"Brains\"
Boss Tweeddepicted by Thomas Nast in a wood engraving published inHarper\'s Weekly, October 21, 1871A Group of Vultures Waiting for the Storm to \"Blow Over\"– \"Let Us Prey.\"
The Tweed Ring depicted by Nast in a wood engraving published inHarper\'s Weekly, September 23, 1871The Tammany Tiger Loose—\"What are you going to do about it?\", published inHarper\'s Weeklyin November 1871, just beforeelection day. \"Boss\" Tweed is depicted in the audience as the Emperor.The 1876 cartoon that helped identify Boss Tweed in Spain.

Nast\'s drawings were instrumental in the downfall ofBoss Tweed, the powerfulTammany Hallleader. As commissioner of public works for New York City, Tweed led a ring that by 1870 had gained total control of the city\'s government, and controlled \"a working majority in the State Legislature\".[28]Tweed and his associates—Peter Barr Sweeny(park commissioner),Richard B. Connolly(controller of public expenditures), and MayorA. Oakey Hall—defrauded the city of many millions of dollars by grossly inflating expenses paid to contractors connected to the Ring. Nast, whose cartoons attacking Tammany corruption had appeared occasionally since 1867, intensified his focus on the four principal players in 1870 and especially in 1871.

Tweed so feared Nast\'s campaign that he sent an emissary to offer the artist a bribe of $100,000, which was represented as a gift from a group of wealthy benefactors to enable Nast to study art in Europe.[29]Feigning interest, Nast negotiated for more before finally refusing an offer of $500,000 with the words, \"Well, I don\'t think I\'ll do it. I made up my mind not long ago to put some of those fellows behind the bars\".[30]Nast pressed his attack in the pages ofHarper\'s, and the Ring was removed from power in the election of November 7, 1871. Tweed was arrested in 1873 and convicted of fraud. When Tweed attempted to escape justice in December 1875 by fleeing toCubaand from there toSpain, officials inVigowere able to identify the fugitive by using one of Nast\'s cartoons.[31]

Party politics[edit]Compromise With the South(1864) by Thomas Nast, urging the U.S. not to capitulate to the Confederacy in the American Civil WarAn 1869 Nast cartoon supporting the Fifteenth Amendment[32][33]Interior Secretary Schurzcleaning house,Harper\'s Weekly, January 26, 1878Senatorial Round House, fromHarper\'s Weekly, July 10, 1886

Harper\'s Weekly, and Nast, played an important role in the election ofAbraham Lincolnin 1864, andUlysses S. Grantin 1868 and 1872. In September 1864, when Lincoln was running for re-election againstDemocraticcandidateGeorge B. McClellan, who positioned himself as the \"peace candidate\",Harper\'s Weeklypublished Nast\'s cartoon \"Compromise with the South – Dedicated to the Chicago Convention\", which criticized McClellan\'s peace platform as pro-South. Millions of copies were made and distributed nationwide, and Nast was later credited with aiding Lincoln\'s campaign in a critical moment.[34]Nast played important role during thepresidential election in 1868, and Ulysses S. Grant attributed his victory to \"the sword of Sheridan and the pencil of Thomas Nast.\"[35]In the 1872 presidential campaign, Nast\'s ridicule ofHorace Greeley\'s candidacy was especially merciless.[36]After Grant\'s victory in 1872,Mark Twainwrote the artist a letter saying: \"Nast, you more than any other man have won a prodigious victory for Grant—I mean, rather, for Civilization and Progress.\"[37]Nast became a close friend of President Grant and the two families shared regular dinners until Grant\'s death in 1885.

Nast and his wife moved toMorristown, New Jerseyin 1872 and there they raised a family that eventually numbered five children. In 1873, Nast toured the United States as a lecturer and a sketch-artist.[38]His activity on the lecture circuit made him wealthy.[39]Nast was for many years a staunch Republican.[40]Nast opposedinflationof thecurrency, notably with his famous rag-baby cartoons, and he played an important part in securingRutherford B. Hayes\' presidential election in 1876. Hayes later remarked that Nast was \"the most powerful, single-handed aid [he] had\",[41]but Nast quickly became disillusioned with President Hayes, whose policy of Southern pacification he opposed.

The death of theWeekly\'s publisher,Fletcher Harper, in 1877 resulted in a changed relationship between Nast and his editorGeorge William Curtis. His cartoons appeared less frequently, and he was not given free rein to criticize Hayes or his policies.[42]Beginning in the late 1860s, Nast and Curtis had frequently differed on political matters and particularly on the role of cartoons in political discourse.[43]Curtis believed that the powerful weapon of caricature should be reserved for \"the Ku-Klux Democracy\" of the opposition party, and did not approve of Nast\'s cartoons assailing Republicans such asCarl SchurzandCharles Sumnerwho opposed policies of the Grant administration.[44]Nast said of Curtis: \"When he attacks a man with his pen it seems as if he were apologizing for the act. I try to hit the enemy between the eyes and knock him down.\"[26]Fletcher Harper consistently supported Nast in his disputes with Curtis.[43]After his death, his nephews, Joseph W. Harper Jr. and John Henry Harper, assumed control of the magazine and were more sympathetic to Curtis\'s arguments for rejecting cartoons that contradicted his editorial positions.[45]

Between 1877 and 1884, Nast\'s work appeared only sporadically inHarper\'s, which began publishing the milder political cartoons ofWilliam Allen Rogers. Although his sphere of influence was diminishing, from this period date dozens of his pro-Chinese immigration drawings, often implicating the Irish as instigators. Nast blamed U.S. SenatorJames G. Blaine(R-Maine) for his support of the Chinese Exclusion Act and depicted Blaine with the same zeal used against Tweed. Nast was one of the few editorial artists who took up for the cause of the Chinese in America.[46]

Portrait of Thomas Nast fromHarper\'s Weekly, 1867

During the presidential election of 1880, Nast felt that he could not support the Republican candidate,James A. Garfield, because of Garfield\'s involvement in theCrédit Mobilier scandal; and did not wish to attack the Democratic candidate,Winfield Scott Hancock, his personal friend and a Union general whose integrity commanded respect. As a result, \"Nast\'s commentary on the 1880 campaign lacked passion\", according to Halloran.[47]He submitted no cartoons toHarper\'sbetween the end of March 1883 and March 1, 1884, partly because of illness.[48]

In 1884, Curtis and Nast agreed that they could not support the Republican candidateJames G. Blaine, a proponent of high tariffs and thespoils systemwhom they perceived as personally corrupt.[49]Instead, they becameMugwumpsby supporting the Democratic candidate,Grover Cleveland, whose platform ofcivil servicereform appealed to them. Nast\'s cartoons helped Cleveland become the first Democrat to be elected President since 1856. In the words of the artist\'s grandson, Thomas Nast St Hill, \"it was generally conceded that Nast\'s support won Cleveland the small margin by which he was elected. In this his last national political campaign, Nast had, in fact, \'made a president\'.\"[50]

Nast\'s tenure atHarper\'s Weeklyended with his Christmas illustration of December 1886. It was said by the journalistHenry Wattersonthat \"in quittingHarper\'s Weekly, Nast lost his forum: in losing him,Harper\'s Weeklylost its political importance.\"[51]Fiona Deans Halloran says \"the former is true to a certain extent, the latter unlikely.\"[52]

Nast lost most of his fortune in 1884 after investing in a banking and brokerage firm operated by the swindlerFerdinand Ward. In need of income, Nast returned to the lecture circuit in 1884 and 1887.[53]Although these tours were successful, they were less remunerative than the lecture series of 1873.[54]