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HomeHarper's Weekly: The Cartoons of Thomas NastNast & the Birth of the Political Cartoon › Portrait of Thomas Nast, Reproduced in *The History of the Nineteenth Century in Caricature*
Portrait of Thomas Nast, Reproduced in *The History of the Nineteenth Century in Caricature* by Maurice, Arthur Bartlett, 1873-1946;
 
Cooper, Frederic Taber, 1864-1937, joint
Public domain · digitally restored by ComicBooks.com
Nast & the Birth of the Political Cartoon

Portrait of Thomas Nast, Reproduced in *The History of the Nineteenth Century in Caricature*

Maurice, Arthur Bartlett, 1873-1946; Cooper, Frederic Taber, 1864-1937, joint · Photograph reproduced in 1904 publication (Dodd, Mead & Co., New York)

This halftone portrait of Thomas Nast (1840–1902) appeared in Arthur Bartlett Maurice and Frederic Taber Cooper's 1904 survey of political caricature. It shows the German-born cartoonist in late middle age — heavy-jowled, white-haired, with a swept mustache and imperial beard — dressed in a dark suit, turned three-quarters to the camera. No caption labels the image beyond the running text's identification. The surrounding pages describe how Nast's relentless caricatures of Boss William Marcy Tweed so accurately rendered his likeness that Spanish police recognized the fugitive Tammany chief from the drawings alone and arrested him. The portrait functions as the book's implicit argument: the face of the man whose pen proved mightier than Tammany's millions.

About this artifact

Creator
Maurice, Arthur Bartlett, 1873-1946; Cooper, Frederic Taber, 1864-1937, joint
Date
Photograph reproduced in 1904 publication (Dodd, Mead & Co., New York)
Rights
Public domain — free to view, share, and reuse.
Restoration
Digitally restored and hosted by ComicBooks.com.

Part of our mission to preserve and restore the public-domain heritage of the medium.