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Thomas Nast |
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Oxford Grove Art:
Thomas Nast |
(b Landau, Bavaria, 27 Sept 1840; d Guayaquil, Ecuador, 7 Dec 1902). American illustrator of German birth. His family emigrated to the USA and settled in New York when he was six. Precocious at drawing, Nast was taught by the German-born history painter Theodore Kaufmann (b 1814) and later studied briefly at the National Academy of Design. In 1855, aged 15, he began to work for Leslie's Illustrated Weekly Magazine, which continued to publish his political cartoons until 1858.
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Gale Encyclopedia of Biography:
Thomas Nast |
The American caricaturist and painter Thomas Nast (1840-1902) is noted for his political cartoons attacking corruption in New York City government and supporting Radical Reconstruction in the South.
Thomas Nast was born on Sept. 27, 1840, in Ludwig, Bavaria. The family emigrated to the United States in 1846, and Thomas was raised and schooled in New York City. He displayed an early talent for drawing. At the age of 15 he took some drawings to Leslie's Weekly, one of the popular magazines of the day, and was hired as an illustrator. In 1862 he joined Harper's Weekly. Throughout the Civil War he turned out patriotic drawings exhorting Northern readers to help crush the Rebels. Abraham Lincoln called him "our best recruiting sergeant."
By the end of the war Nast and Harper's Weekly had become virtually inseparable, and Nast turned his hand toward attacking President Andrew Johnson's attempts to subvert the Radical Republican Reconstruction program. He hammered away at those who tried to undermine Negro political rights in the South with the same zeal and venom he had used earlier on Rebels.
In attacking Johnson's policies, Nast began to depart from conventional representational illustration by distorting and exaggerating the physical traits of his subjects. Because of the technical skill and the self-righteous fervor he brought to the task, it was often said that the art of political caricature reached a new peak of sophistication and importance in his work.
The heights were probably reached in Nast's unrelenting attack against political corruption in New York City in the early 1870s. Nast's caricatures of William "Boss" Tweed and his henchmen in Tammany Hall (the New York County Democratic political machine) played a major role in defeating the machine and imprisoning Tweed. Nast demonstrated his own incorruptibility by refusing to accept a $200,000 bribe to stop his attacks.
During the political crusades Nast also made what have become his most famous, if not his most important, contributions to American politics: he invented and popularized the Democratic donkey, the Republican elephant, and the Tammany tiger. Nast reached his peak of fame, influence, and wealth in the 1870s. Thereafter he began a long, frustrating decline. Technical changes in magazine reproduction led to the obsolescence of the wood-carved plates at which he excelled. In addition, his continued attempts to reopen the wounds of the Civil War made many people uneasy. Tweed's death in 1878 deprived Nast of another favorite target. Nast tried his hand at attacking various other groups who aroused his ire, such as labor unionists (whom he portrayed as vicious, foreign, bomb-throwing anarchists) and the Catholic Church, but the public failed to respond with the same enthusiasm. His contract with Harper's Weekly terminated in 1884, and his work appeared with decreasing frequency.
In 1902 Nast was rescued from an impecunious end by an admirer, President Theodore Roosevelt, who arranged for his appointment as U.S. consul in Guayaquil, Ecuador. Nast did not really want to go to Guayaquil. However, he was in no position to turn down a steady source of income. He died there of yellow fever on Dec. 7, 1902.
Further Reading
The standard work on Nast is Albert Bigelow Paine, Th. Nast: His Period and His Pictures (1904). Although uncritical and dated in its historical interpretations, Paine's work contains a wealth of information on Nast and examples of much of his work. Morton Keller, The Art and Politics of Thomas Nast (1968), is very good and more balanced in interpretation. The short text in John Chalmers Vinson, Thomas Nast: Political Cartoonist (1967), tends toward the same laudatory tone as Paine but contains 120 pages of large reproductions of Nast's work.
Additional Sources
Paine, Albert Bigelow, Thomas Nast, his period and his pictures, New York: Chelsea House, 1980.
Houghton Mifflin Companion to US History:
Nast, Thomas |
(1840-1902), political cartoonist. Nast may reasonably be judged the most powerful and influential political cartoonist that America has ever known. To a unique degree he both shaped and illuminated the political consciousness of his time. Nast's career was closely linked to the rise of illustrated magazines in the mid-nineteenth century. Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, America's first successful pictorial magazine, appeared in 1855, and the teenaged Nast was one of its artists. Harper's Weekly, the vehicle for Nast's greatest work, followed in 1857.
His medium was the woodblock engraving. His first important drawings, dealing with the course and character of the Civil War, relied appropriately enough on somber, fluid tones of gray and black. After the war he turned to vigorous political commentary, with drawings notable for their clarity of line. Part of the impact of his works derived from their size: his Harper's cover drawings were nine by ten inches, his inside double-spread cartoons more than thirteen by twenty. But his real significance lay in what he had to say. As Daumier drew strength from his adversarial relationship to the France of the July Monarchy, so Nast gave pictorial form to the intense passions of the Civil War and Reconstruction. He was the great pictorialist (as Lincoln was the great wordsmith) of the crisis of nineteenth-century American nationalism.
Nast was born in Germany and brought to America in 1846. He came of age in antebellum New York City, part of a middlebrow literary-artistic community whose leitmotifs were romantic nationalism, classic liberalism, and antislavery. This was the worldview that gave form to Nast's brilliant comments on the great political drama of his time. During his peak productive years in the 1860s and 1870s, he created or popularized some of the most influential symbols of nineteenth-century American political life: the Tammany tiger, the Republican elephant, the Democratic donkey, the workingman with his cap and dinner pail, the Rag Baby of currency inflation. He also popularized the figure of Santa Claus as a round, cheery dispenser of gifts, exuding a gemütlichkeit that Nast drew from the folklore of his native land.
Nast's greatest work dealt with the politics and public policies of the post-Civil War decade. There is a notable correlation between the quality of his art and the force of personal conviction that lay behind it. When he commented on issues that stirred his liberal conscience--the struggle for the Union and against slavery, the plight of the freedmen during Reconstruction, the threat that Andrew Johnson and the Democrats posed to the war's results, the menace of the Tweed Ring, the danger (as he saw it) of Roman Catholicism to American mores and institutions--he did so with what has been called the "stark, focused style" of his artistic peak.
But his political commitments became muddied from the mid-1870s on, when postwar Radical Republicanism gave way to the scandals of the Grant administration, rising economic and social tensions, and a resurgent negrophobia. In pace with his growing disillusion, his art declined. He ended a pensioner of sorts, as the American consul in Guayaquil, Ecuador, where he died of yellow fever.
Bibliography:
Morton Keller, The Art and Politics of Thomas Nast (1968); Albert B. Paine, Thomas Nast, His Period and His Pictures (1981).
Author:
Morton Keller
Columbia Encyclopedia:
Thomas Nast |
Bibliography
See study by M. Keller (1968).
Wikipedia on Answers.com:
Thomas Nast |
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This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (February 2012) |
| Thomas Nast | |
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 Self-portrait of Thomas Nast |
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| Born | September 27, 1840 Landau, Germany |
| Died | December 7, 1902 (aged 62) Guayaquil, Ecuador |
| Signature |  |
Thomas Nast (September 27, 1840 – December 7, 1902) was a German-born American caricaturist and editorial cartoonist who is considered to be the "Father of the American Cartoon".[1] He was the scourge of Boss Tweed and the Tammany Hall political machine. Among his notable works were the creation of the modern version of Santa Claus and the political symbol of the elephant for the Republican Party. Contrary to popular belief, Nast did not create Uncle Sam (the male personification of the American people), Columbia,[disambiguation needed 
] the female personification of American values, or the Democratic donkey,[2] though he did popularize these symbols through his art.
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Nast was born in the barracks of Landau, Germany (now in Rhine Palatinate), the son of a trombonist in the Bavarian 9th regiment band; he had a half sister named Andie. The elder Nast's socialist political convictions put him at odds with the Bavarian government, and in 1846 he left Landau, enlisting first on a French man-of-war and subsequently on an American ship.[3] He sent his wife and children to New York City, and at the end of his enlistment in 1850 he joined them there.[4]
Thomas Nast's passion for drawing was apparent from an early age, and he was enrolled for about a year of study with Alfred Fredericks and Theodore Kaufmann and at the school of the National Academy of Design. Nast attended school in New York City from the age of six to fifteen, when he was forced to drop out because of financial problems. The boy had problems adjusting to life in America and never took well to school. He spent his entire school career on the verge of flunking out and consequently was not an especially good speller. After school he started working in 1855 as a draftsman for Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper; three years afterward, he moved to Harper's Weekly.[citation needed]
Nast drew for Harper's Weekly from 1859 to 1860 and from 1862 until 1886. In February 1860, he went to England for the New York Illustrated News to depict one of the major sporting events of the era, the prize fight between the American John C. Heenan and the English Thomas Sayers[5] sponsored by George Wilkes, publisher of Wilkes' Spirit of the Times. A few months later, as artist for The Illustrated London News, he joined Garibaldi in Italy. Nast's cartoons and articles about the Garibaldi military campaign to unify Italy captured the popular imagination in the U.S. In 1861, he married Sarah Edwards, whom he had met two years earlier.
One of his first serious works in caricature was the cartoon "Peace" (1862), directed against those in the North who opposed the prosecution of the American Civil War. This and his other cartoons during the Civil War and Reconstruction days were published in Harper's Weekly. He was known for drawing battlefields in border and southern states. These attracted great attention, and Nast was called by President Abraham Lincoln "our best recruiting sergeant".[6] Later, Nast strongly opposed President Andrew Johnson and his Reconstruction policy.
Nast's drawings were instrumental in the downfall of Boss Tweed, the powerful Tammany Hall leader. 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".[7] Tweed and his associates—Peter Barr Sweeny (park commissioner), Richard B. Connolly (controller of public expenditures), and Mayor A. 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 an emissary was sent to offer Thomas Nast a large bribe, which was represented as a gift from a group of wealthy benefactors to enable Nast to study art in Europe.[8] Feigning interest, Nast bid the initial offer of $100,000 up to $500,000 before declaring, "I don't think I'll do it."[9] Nast pressed his attack, and an indignant public rose against the Ring, which 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 to Cuba and from there to Spain, officials in Vigo, Spain, were able to identify the fugitive by using one of Nast's cartoons.[10]
Nast was baptized a Catholic at the Sankt Maria Catholic Church in Landau,[11] and for a time received Catholic education in New York City.[12] When Nast converted to Protestantism remains unclear, however his conversion was likely formalized upon his marriage in 1861. (The family were practicing Episcopalians at St. Peter's in Morristown).[13] Nast considered the Roman Catholic Church a threat to American values, and often portrayed the Irish Catholics and Catholic Church leaders in hostile terms. In 1871, one of his works, titled "The American River Ganges," portrayed Catholic bishops as crocodiles waiting to attack American school children; they wanted to have Catholic schools for Catholic children. Nast expressed his feelings about ethnic Irish in his depictions of the Irish as violent drunks.
In general, his political cartoons supported American Indians and Chinese Americans. He advocated abolition of slavery, opposed segregation, and deplored the violence of the Ku Klux Klan. One of his more famous cartoons, entitled "Worse than Slavery", showed a despondent black family holding their dead child as a schoolhouse is destroyed by arson, as two members of the Ku Klux Klan and White League, paramilitary insurgent groups in the Reconstruction-era South, shake hands in their mutually destructive work against black Americans.
His 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. His signature "Tammany Tiger" has been emulated by many cartoonists over the years. He introduced into American cartoons the practice of modernizing scenes from Shakespeare for a political purpose.
Harper's Weekly, and Nast, played an important role in the election of Ulysses Grant in 1868 and 1872; in the latter campaign, Nast's ridicule of Horace Greeley's candidacy was especially merciless. Nast became a close friend of President Grant and the two families shared regular dinners until Grant's death. Nast encouraged the former president's efforts in writing his autobiography while battling cancer.
He moved to Morristown, New Jersey in 1872 and lived there for many years. In 1873, Nast toured the United States as a lecturer and a sketch-artist, as he would do again in 1885 and 1887.
He shared political views with his friend Mark Twain and was for many years a staunch Republican. Nast opposed inflation of the currency, notably with his famous rag-baby cartoons, and he played an important part in securing Rutherford B. Hayes’ presidential election in 1876. Hayes later remarked that Nast was "the most powerful, single-handed aid [he] had",[14] but Nast quickly became disillusioned with President Hayes, whose policy of Southern pacification he opposed. He was not given free rein to attack Hayes in Harper's, however; with the death of Fletcher Harper in 1877, Nast lost an important champion at the journal.[15] Although Nast's sphere of influence was diminishing, from this period date many of his pro-Chinese immigration drawings; Nast was one of the few editorial artists who took up for the cause of the Chinese in America.[16] Overall, Nast's contributions at Harper's became less frequent. He focused on oil paintings and book illustrations, but these are comparatively unimportant.
In 1884, his advocacy of civil service reform and his distrust of James G. Blaine, the Republican presidential candidate, forced him to become a Mugwump, whose support of Grover Cleveland helped him to win election as the first Democratic 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.'"[17]
Nevertheless, Nast's tenure at Harper's Weekly ended with his Christmas illustration of December 1886. In the words of journalist Henry Watterson, "in quitting Harper's Weekly, Nast lost his forum: in losing him, Harper's Weekly lost its political importance."[18]
In 1890, Nast published Thomas Nast's Christmas Drawings for the Human Race. He contributed cartoons in various publications, notably the Illustrated American, but was unable to regain his earlier popularity.
In 1892, he took control of a failing magazine, the New York Gazette, and renamed it Nast's Weekly. Now returned to the Republican fold, Nast used the Weekly as a vehicle for his cartoons supporting Benjamin Harrison for president, but the magazine had little impact and ceased publication shortly after Harrison's defeat.[19]
In 1902 Theodore Roosevelt appointed him as the United States' Consul General to Guayaquil, Ecuador in South America. During a deadly yellow fever outbreak, Nast stayed to the end helping numerous diplomatic missions and businesses escape the contagion. He contracted the disease and died on December 7 of that year. His body was returned to the United States, where he was interred in the Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx, New York.
Nast's depiction of iconic characters, such as Santa Claus and Uncle Sam, are widely credited with giving us the recognized versions we see today.
A popular myth says that the word "nasty" was based on Thomas Nast's name, due to the tone of his cartoons.[22] But, the word "nasty" has origins in Old French and Dutch hundreds of years before Nast was born.[23]
Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Nast, Thomas". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. |
Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Thomas Nast |
"Nast, Thomas". Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography. 1900. Nast, Thomas". The New Student's Reference Work. Chicago: F. E. Compton and Co.. Wikisource
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 | Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 1994-2012 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more |
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