Since the day of Tenniel and Nast, cari caturing seems to have fallen into less virile hands. Tenniel and Nast each drew a cari cature once a week, while now caricaturists draw seven or eight in that time. Formerly the best caricaturists were employed on the weekly papers, while now the better class are employed on the great dailies. But the times have brought this about, not necessarily the caricaturists. Workingmen have no time to read, and a picture which may tell all at a glance means more to them than the ablest editorial that the • combined editors of the country could write. A picture can be under stood by all, whereas we have many languages and we speak but few, and read fewer. Words we forget, but pictures stay, filed away in our minds, and we refer to them on a moment's notice. Every day, as the pace quickens, and the press for time increases, we find our time for reading diminishes, thus the moving-pic ture excels the finest description ever written of the same thing.
We sometimes see so-called comic art, which is not comic, and that called caricature which is not true caricature. A man who draws a pic ture of a man with a broad grin and winking with one eye, or cross-eyed, or perhaps a man standing with one foot on his other, is not necessarily a caricaturist any more than is the man who puts big feet and big noses on every person he draws. A young caricaturist who had submitted a picture to a critic for his judgment and had received a severe lecture on the bad drawing it displayed made an attempt to hide behind the fact that it was a caricature, and therefore shouldn't be con sidered as the critic was considering it. Where upon he replied: °No, never try to hide behind that. Remember one thing: that poor draw ing is not caricature, and another, that all the bad artists in the country are not caricaturists. On the contrary, those who exaggerate the salient features must draw them even better, as more attention is called to a big nose or large ears if they are made conspicuously large, than would be the case otherwise.* But there is something else that a success ful caricaturist must possess. That one thing, whatever it may be called, is of more import ance than the art of drawing properly, and is a certain force of character, or of individuality which at once suggests strength of purpose and power. It can convey the feeling of sadness, of brute force, or excruciating mirth, yet many very fine draughtsmen who are styled carica turists never draw with that spirit predomi nant, and without it their productions are not true caricatures.
Thus, in trying to be caricaturists, such men are robbed of the chance of being serious illus trators, in which work they might succeed; and they never succeed as caricaturists.
There are three kinds of good caricatures: First, the strong, powerful, almost brutal; sec ond, the humorous, the one instantly compelling laughter; and last, but not the least m effect, the pathetic; a picture capable of causing men to weep. The most effective are the powerful and the pathetic. The humorous is indeed attrac tive, if not overdone, but you soon forget its meaning. It can attack any and all things, from the weather to the President, without of fense. But the most effective caricature is one that the subject of it would rather you would not print. Probably none can be made more powerful than the pathetic when it is timed and tempered just right, as its appeal to the sympathy is the surest way to the emotions. No caricaturist ever drew a caricature that would cause people to shed tears on seeing it, unless the artist shed tears when he drew it, any more than one could draw an angry political boss unless at the time of drawing one wore the same angry and hateful expression on one's own face. So with the humorist. One must
wear a broad smile when he draws a man laughing, unless one is drawing him from life; and unless one is smiling when drawing smiling people, the subjects will seem to look and laugh only in mechanical fashion.
If the caricaturist is strong enough in his line to be called one, the first person he wins is himself. Once he has settled in his own mind that he is working for a just cause, it will be noticed at once that his work improves, and if he continues to study and put his heart and soul into it, others will be converted and he will acquire a following. If a cartoonist in his poli tics keeps side by side with his pictures he will be much more of a caricaturist than one who will work on a Democratic paper one day and the next on the Republican side. A young man in starting out should study and choose for him self and in that way he will find that he can lend more power and force to his work. It would be hard to imagine Thomas Nast being in private life a sympathizer with Tweed. The difficulty with caricaturists is that they are sometimes like the politician after the election, when he says: "No wonder the other side won; 'they bought us.' A What interest could one take outside of the mechanical reproduction if one knew that the caricaturist who had one year drawn powerful caricatures for one party would turn around the next year and work for the opposition. The power of a caricature becomes power only when the reader of the picture is convinced that that which is repre sented in the picture really did happen, and that cannot be done by a caricaturist if one day he is with the poor, and the next day with the rich; or in the same relation with any case that comes up.
The late John J. Ingalls said that the carica ture did harm that good might follow. Cari catures, to be effective, should be founded on fragments of truth, though you are permitted to dig below the frost line. Without truth at the bottom they are powerless, and with truth at the bottom they are powerful and everlast ing. Though Tweed, the man, is dead, Tweed, in the caricature, still lives, a prisoner in stripes, with ball and chain to his leg. A good caricature may be called an exaggeration of the truth. In these times there are great oppor tunities for the cartoonist. The billionaire will have to deal kindly and justly with his fellow men, or else he will be more of a target than ever before, but the honest man need never fear a caricature; on the contrary, he can laugh and go about his business, and if he is attacked, the attacks will react in his favor. But they cannot be recommended as the steady diet for a dishonest person, since whether he has a conscience or not, if they don't bring him to justice they will give him many a sleepless night.
Flogel, E., 'Geschichte des Grotesk-Komischen) (Leipzig 1778) ; Champ fleury, F., 'Histoire generale de la carica ture' (Paris ; Wright, F., 'History of Caricature and Grotesque' (London 1875) ; Parton, J., 'Caricature and other Comic Arts' (New York 1877); Grand-Carteret, J., 'Les incurs et la caricature en Allemagne, en Autriche et en Suisse' (Paris 1885) ; Everitt, W., 'English Caricaturists of the 19th Century' (London 1886).