c. 1890s SKETCHBOOK - POLITICS, STEREOTYPES

Item #893

Clothbound sketchbook, 4 1/16” x 7 1/4”, with cloth flap for a pencil stapled to the top inner rear cover. 24 leaves/48 pages, 10-11 pages blank.

Very faded name of artist on cover - C N Copp- (rest of name indecipherable)

Could this have been the work of a political cartoonist? Some of the finished work is quite accomplished, and several sketches reveal an eye for social satire. Well-dressed people with beady eyes/demonic features feature in many of the illustrations; the artist seems to have had a fixation on bald, short men in “capitalist” attire. Most sketches are drawn lightly and lack detail; simple pencil portraits, two of which are shockingly racist, though typical of their time.

As well as the finery of the elegant, the cartoonist also illustrated the lower/uneducated classes - a nice three-page sequence features a young rural boy going fishing, with his little dog (who carries the bait-bucket in his jaws) trailing along.

Cloth binding worn, water-stained but intact and not frayed, with healthy corners and strong spine; no warping. Stitch binding long gone, so pages loose, but not individually; first, last pages (of a different, thinner stock) have come undone from each other and are thus loose from the main bundle of centrally-folded pages.

Price: $150.00