The Pioneers of American Caricature

Grant Wright's engraved plate arranges three portrait medallions around crossed paintbrushes and pen nibs — the tools of the trade serving as both frame and tribute. At top, Thos. Nast appears bearded and pipe-smoking; below left, Joseph Keppler faces left with a full mustache and curling hair; below right, Bernard Gillam turns in profile, similarly mustachioed. All three are rendered in the tight crosshatch line common to late nineteenth-century magazine illustration — dignified, not caricatured. The composition argues a lineage: Nast at Harper's Weekly, Keppler founding Puck, Gillam sharpening its partisan edge. Together they defined American political cartooning as a profession with genuine electoral power — Nast's pen helped destroy Boss Tweed; Keppler's color lithography democratized satire. Wright places them in a pantheon at the moment that first generation was passing.