Staff Meeting

A quieter register, and a rare monochrome in a gallery built on color. Around a cluttered table the men of Puck lean in over a spread of drawings, weighing what will run. Keppler stands at the far left, hand on hip, presiding over the huddle he built. Behind them a curtained studio and an easel; a framed portrait watches from the wall. Rendered in ink wash rather than the lush chromolithograph the magazine sold to the public, this is the shop floor rather than the finished page, the editorial argument before it became a picture. Keppler was among the most influential cartoonists of his century; when he died in 1894 his son Udo kept the enterprise going, and the little weekly conference in this drawing went on without him.