Everything about Thomas Nast totally explained
Thomas Nast (
September 27,
1840 –
December 7,
1902) was a famous German-American
caricaturist and
editorial cartoonist in the 19th century and is considered to be the father of American political cartooning.
Youth and education
He was born in the barracks of
Landau,
Germany (in the
Rhine Palatinate), the son of a
trombonist in the 9th regiment
Bavarian band. The elder Nast's liberal political convictions put him at odds with the German government, and in 1846 he left Landau, enlisting first on a French
man-of-war and subsequently on an American ship. He sent his wife and children to
New York City, and at the end of his enlistment in 1849 he joined them there. Thomas Nast's passion for drawing was apparent from an early age, and he was enrolled for about a year of study with Alfred Fredericks and Theodore Kaufmann and at the school of the
National Academy of Design. After school (at the age of 15), he started working in 1855 as a draftsman for
Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper; three years afterwards for
Harper's Weekly.
Career
Nast drew for
Harper's Weekly from 1859 to 1860 and from 1862 until 1886. In February 1860 he went to
England for the
New York Illustrated News to depict one of the major sporting events of the era, the
prize fight between the American
John C. Heenan and the English
Thomas Sayers. A few months later, as artist for
The Illustrated London News, he joined
Garibaldi in Italy. Nast's cartoons and articles about the Garibaldi
military campaign to unify Italy captured the popular imagination in the U.S. In 1861, he married Sarah Edwards, whom he'd met two years earlier.
His first serious works in caricature was the cartoon "Peace," (made in 1862) directed against those in the North who opposed the prosecution of the
American Civil War. This and his other cartoons during the Civil War and
Reconstruction days were published in
Harper's Weekly. He was known for drawing battlefields in
border and
southern states. These attracted great attention, and Nast was called by President
Abraham Lincoln "our best recruiting sergeant". Later, Nast strongly opposed President
Andrew Johnson and his Reconstruction policy.
Campaign against the Tweed Ring
Nast's drawings were instrumental in the downfall of
Boss Tweed, who so feared Nast's campaign that an emissary was sent to offer Thomas Nast a $500,000 bribe to "drop this Ring business" and take a trip abroad. Declining the offer, Nast pressed his attack, and Tweed was arrested in 1873 and convicted of fraud. When Tweed attempted to escape justice in December 1875 by fleeing to Cuba and from there to Spain, officials in
Vigo,
Spain were able to identify the fugitive by using one of Nast's cartoons.
Nast believed that the well-organized Irish immigrant communities in New York had provided the basis for Tweed's popular support. Because of this—along with Nast's
Anti-Catholic and
Nativist beliefs—Nast often portrayed the Irish immigrant community, and Catholic Church leaders, with extreme prejudice. In 1875, one of his works, titled "The American River Ganges", Nast famously portrayed Catholic Bishops as
crocodiles waiting to attack American families.
In general, his political cartoons supported
American Indians,
Chinese Americans and advocated
abolition of slavery. Nast also dealt with
segregation and the violence of the
Ku Klux Klan, which was detailed in one of his more famous cartoons called "Worse than Slavery", which showed a despondent black family having their house destroyed by
arson, and two members of the Ku Klux Klan and White League are shaking hands in their mutually destructive work against black Americans.
His cartoons frequently had numerous sidebars and panels with intricate subplots to the main cartoon. A Sunday feature could provide hours of entertainment and highlight social causes. His signature "Tammany Tiger" has been emulated by many cartoonists over the years, and he introduced into American cartoons the practice of modernizing scenes from Shakespeare for a political purpose.
Party politics
Harper's Weekly, and Nast, played an important role in the election of
Ulysses Grant in 1868 and 1872; in the latter campaign, Nast's ridicule of
Horace Greeley's candidacy was especially merciless. Nast became a close friend of President Grant and the two families shared regular dinners until Grant's death. Nast encouraged the former president's efforts in writing his autobiography while battling cancer.
He moved to
Morristown, New Jersey in 1872 and lived there for many years. In 1873, Nast toured the United States as lecturer and sketch-artist, as he'd do again in 1885 and 1887.
He shared political views with his friend
Mark Twain and was for many years a staunch Republican. Nast opposed
inflation of the
currency, notably with his famous rag-baby cartoons, and he played an important part in securing
Rutherford B. Hayes’ presidential election in 1876. Hayes later remarked that Nast was "the most powerful, single-handed aid [he] had", but Nast quickly became disillusioned with President Hayes, whose policy of Southern pacification he opposed. He wasn't given free rein to attack Hayes in
Harper's, however; with the death of Fletcher Harper in 1877, Nast lost an important champion at the journal, and his contributions became less frequent. He focused on oil paintings and book illustrations, but these are comparatively unimportant.
In 1884, his advocacy of
civil service reform and his distrust of
James G. Blaine, the Republican presidential candidate, forced him to become a
Mugwump, whose support of
Grover Cleveland helped him to win election as the first Democratic president since 1856. In the words of the artist's grandson, Thomas Nast St Hill, "it was generally conceded that Nast's support won Cleveland the small margin by which he was elected. In this his last national political campaign, Nast had, in fact, 'made a president.'" Nevertheless, Nast's tenure at Harper's Weekly ended with his Christmas illustration of December 1886. In the words of journalist
Henry Watterson, "in quitting Harper's Weekly, Nast lost his forum: in losing him, Harper's Weekly lost its political importance."
In 1890, he published
Thomas Nast's Christmas Drawings for the Human Race. He contributed cartoons in various publications, notably the
Illustrated American, but with the advent of new methods and younger blood his vogue was passed. In 1892, he took control of a failing magazine, the
New York Gazette, and renamed it
Nast's Weekly. Now returned to the Republican fold, Nast used the Weekly as a vehicle for his cartoons supporting
Benjamin Harrison for president, but the magazine had little impact and ceased publication shortly after Harrison's defeat.
In 1902 Theodore Roosevelt appointed him as United States' Consul General to
Guayaquil,
Ecuador in
South America. During a deadly yellow fever outbreak, Nast heroically stayed to the end helping numerous diplomatic missions and businesses escape the contagion. At age 62, in 1902, he died of
yellow fever contracted there. His body was returned to the United States where he was interred in the
Woodlawn Cemetery in
The Bronx,
New York.
Notable works
- A classic version of Santa Claus, drawn in 1863 for Harper's Weekly. Before then, most depictions of Santa Claus showed a tall, thin man. Nast drew him as the bearded, plump man known today.
- Republican Party elephant
- Democratic Party donkey
- Depiction of an Irishman as a chimpanzee
- Tammany Hall tiger, a symbol of Boss Tweed's political machine
- Columbia, a graceful image of the Americas as a woman, usually in flowing gown and tiara, carrying a sword to defend the downtrodden.
- Uncle Sam, a lanky image of the United States (first drawn in the 1830s; Nast and John Tenniel added the goatee).
- John Chinaman, a stereotypical image of a Chinese Immigrant.
References in other media
In December 2006 Nast was featured in the
Discovery Channel special "Christmas and the Civil War."
Further Information
Get more info on 'Thomas Nast'.
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