Details
Creator Clay, Edward Williams, 1799-1857, artist.
Contributor Childs, Cephas Grier, 1793-1871, printer.
Childs & Inman, publisher.
Title [Road to Philadelphy] [graphic].
Publisher [Philadelphia] : [Childs or Childs & Inman]
Publisher PA. Philadelphia. 1830
Date [1830 or 1831]
Physical Description 1 print : lithograph ; sheet 20 x 23 cm (7.5 x 8.75 in.)
Description Racist caricature simultaneously mocking and condoning the pretentiousness and bigotry of early 19th century Philadelphia Quakers toward their "social inferiors." Shows a Philadelphia road in front of a small home with an open picket fence and a visitor arriving on horseback. In front of the fence, a dark skinned traveler, possibly an Irishman or African American, with buck teeth and carrying a knapsack and a walking stick, asks a rotund white Quaker man and his attractive prim and proper daughter, "I say, this isn't the road to Philadelphy, honey, is it?" The father responds indignantly to the "Friend," that he is not only asking a question, but also telling a lie, and of course it is the road.
Is referenced by Wainwright, 315
Notes Attributed to E.W. Clay.
Title and publication information supplied by Wainwright.
Philadelphia on Stone
Clay, born in Philadelphia, was the most prolific caricaturist of the Jacksonian era. He became well known for his popular racist series, "Life in Philadelphia," published from 1828 until around 1830, which mocked upwardly mobile African American Philadelphians as ineptly attempting to imitate the white middle class.
Nancy Reynolds Davison's E.W. Clay: American political caricaturist of the Jacksonian era. (PhD. diss., The University of Michigan, 1980), p. 76, 358. (LCP Print Room, Uz A423.O)
LCP holds duplicate untrimmed print: *Wainwright 315.
Accessioned 1982.
RVCDC
Description revised 2021.
Access points revised 2021.
Subject Society of Friends -- Caricatures and cartoons.
African American men -- Caricatures and cartoons.
Ethnic stereotypes.
Irish Americans -- Caricatures and cartoons.
Quakers -- Caricatures and cartoons.
Racism in popular culture.
Social classes -- Pennsylvania -- Philadelphia.
African Americans -- Relations with Quakers.
Genre Lithographs -- 1830-1840.
Printer Childs & Inman, publisher.
Location Library Company of Philadelphia| Print Department| W315 [P.2179]
Accession number P.2179