Full-length, caricatured portrait depicting T.D. Rice, known as the "father of American minstrelsy." Depicts Rice as his African American racist shyster character of "Jim Crow." He is portrayed with exaggerated features and mannerisms. He stands, attired in torn and worn clothing, in an exaggerated pose with his right hand on his hip as his left hand tips his hat. His attire includes a jacket, vest, collared shirt, pantaloons, stockings, and slip one shoes. He stands in a fenced in pasture with two cabins in the distant background. Blackface minstrelsy is a popular entertainment form, originating in the United States in the mid-19th century and remaining in American life through the 20th century. The form is based around stereotypical and racist portrayals of African Americans, including mocking dialect, parodic lyrics, and the application of Black face paint; all designed to portray African Americans as othered subjects of humor and disrespect. Blackface was a dominant form for theatrical and musical performances for decades, both on stage and in private homes. Jim Crow (mid to late 19th century) was a Minstrel character representing enslaved/rural Black manhood as foolish, lazy, interested in shirking labor., Title from item., After the caricature illustration originally created around the 1820s, often reproduced on sheet music covers of the 19th century. See Hugh Honour's The Image of the Black in western art (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989), part 2, vol. IV, p. 62-63., Description of Blackface minstrelsy and minstrel characters from Dorothy Berry, Descriptive Equity and Clarity around Blackface Minstrelsy in H(arvard) T(heater) C(ollection) Collections, 2021., Purchase 1992., RVCDC, Description revised 2021., Access points revised 2021., Part of digital collections catalog through a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services as administered by the Pennsylvania Department of Education through the Office of Commonwealth Libraries, and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Tom Corbett, Governor, 2013-2014.
Date
[ca. 1885]
Location
Library Company of Philadelphia | Print Department portrait prints - Rice [P.9369]
Photographic reproduction of a caricature satirizing Benjamin Butler's failed expedition at Bermuda Hundred on the peninsula at the confluence of the Appomattox and James rivers during the Bermuda Hundred Campaign (1864). As quoted in Ulysses S. Grant's 1885-1886 memoirs, Butler's command of the movement of the troops left the general "as if he had been in a bottle strongly corked" by the Confederate line. Shows Butler encased in a corked bottle in front of a map labeled "Bermuda Hundred.", LCP holds original caricature drawing, probably originally part of a McAllister scrapbook [drawings & watercolors - unid. - B (P.2006.1.11)]., Probably originally part of a McAllister scrapbook., Digitized by Alexander Street Press for Images of the American Civil War.
Date
[ca. 1886]
Location
Library Company of Philadelphia | Print Department cdv - misc. - Civil War - Caricatures and cartoons [P.2006.1.12]
Illustrated trade card and caricature depicting a lampoon of the balcony scene from William Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet," except Juliet is much larger than Romeo and cannot see him even though he is immediately below her., Cataloging funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (PW-506-19-10), 2010-2012., Gift of John H. Serembus., Digitized.
Date
c1883
Location
Library Company of Philadelphia | Print Department trade card - Coe [P.2005.30.1]