Funeral of Lazarus

Edward Jump's lithograph imagines the burial of Lazarus—almost certainly the well-known San Francisco street dog—as civic spectacle. The caption reads "FUNERAL OF LAZARUS." At left, a robed officiant (Joshua A. Norton, self-proclaimed Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico, rendered in mock-episcopal vestments) presides over the graveside rites, book in hand. Frederick Coombs—"George Washington II"—crouches at center, digging. Behind them crowds a gallery of recognizable San Francisco eccentrics and public figures, with a wagon bearing a cage at upper left. A black cat picks its way across the foreground. Jump employs physiognomic caricature, exaggerating features to comic effect in the manner of illustrated humor of the 1860s. Jump died by suicide in April 1883.