Chicago Daily News, November 20, 1892
Descriptive Detail
In the November 20, 1892, Thanksgiving section of the Chicago Daily News there is a collection of caricatures—exaggerated likenesses of famous and popular personages of Chicago. They are all gentlemen in trousers and tails, some with hats, canes, and cigars. Eugene Field is in the center. He is very bald and gazes into a hand mirror. He has a belt of what seems to be laurel leaves with a tag that reads “poet laureate.” Around his head is a ribbon, attached to another tag that reads “Thankful that pay day comes once a week and that I get handsomer everyday.”
Local Historical Connections
When Eugene Field appeared as a part of a set of caricatures in 1892, he was being spoofed because he was so loved by his reading public and because he himself often spoofed his own foibles. His column “Sharps and Flats,” a humorous and sometimes satiric commentary on everyday life and social aspects of the 1890s in Chicago, was one of the most popular features of the newspaper. Since he satirized others in print, it was only fair that he be satirized in art. Beloved as a poet, a children’s author, and a satirist, his sudden death at age forty-five, brought hundreds to the streets of Chicago to mourn. Memorials to Field are all over the city, most prominently the stature of the “Dream Lady” from his poem “Rock-a-by-Lady,” erected in 1922 at the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago.
National Historical Connections
The art of satire involves highlighting human or individual follies, foibles, and shortcomings through ridicule, sarcasm, or irony, ideally with the intent of encouraging improvement. A caricature also ridicules or satirizes its subject though the use of comically distorted drawings or likenesses. Both are long-practiced arts. One of the earliest political caricatures may date back to 1360 B.C. The target of the cartoon, Amenhotep IV, pharaoh husband of Queen Nefertiti, had alienated Egypt by imposing monotheism on his kingdom. In the eighteenth century the caricature became connected to journalism and was put to vicious use by political commentators. Benjamin Franklin published the first political cartoon for the colonies when he created a pamphlet for the Albany Conference to discuss the relations with the Iroquois Nation. In 1754 he published a drawing of a snake, segments pulled apart, and each segment representing eight colonies. The caption is “Join, or Die.” In the 1880s photo-process engraving made it possible to produce and illustrate daily newspapers cheaply, bringing caricatures to the general public. In the twentieth century caricature increasingly moved into the editorial, sports, and theatrical sections. Most time periods and cultures feel a need to draw attention to or represent particular members of society—sometimes in a favorable light and sometimes not—in hope that the subject of the caricature will reflect and change for the better, ultimately leading them to make a difference in society.
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Caricature of Eugene Field