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Glackens, Louis M.

[Can It Be That My Tail Is Trying to Wag Me?]

Ink and blue pencil on heavyweight paper, 11.25” x 18.25” plus margins, initialed lower left: “LMG.” Production notes and markings, as well as a couple later stamps/notes on verso. CONDITION: Very good, smudging and soiling to verso.

A delightful pen and ink political cartoon map showing California as the “tail that wags the dog,” drawn by a notable cartoonist.

This original drawing was published in the May 14th, 1913 issue of Puck and makes reference to the growing influence of California in national politics during the first term of President Woodrow Wilson. The United States is depicted here as a dog, with the head of Uncle Sam and California as its wagging tail. Uncle Sam’s head (in the Northeast) looks over his shoulder with an irritated expression. This may be a reference to the outsized influence of Progressive politics in the rapidly-growing state, which was leading the nation in reforms as it gained political power. By 1913, California had passed bills implementing electoral reforms like direct primaries and nonpartisan statewide races, along with labor rights and women’s rights legislation. Its Progressive Republican governor Hiram Johnson ran for Vice President on Theodore Roosevelt’s Progressive “Bull Moose” ticket in 1912, earning twenty-seven percent of the vote, the highest showing for a third party in US history. A Puck stamp dated May 5th, 1913, appears on the back.

Louis “L. M.” Glackens (1866–1933) was an American cartoonist, illustrator, and animator whose work was regularly published on the cover and in the interior of Puck magazine for over twenty years. His younger brother was Ashcan School painter William Glackens (1870–1938). L. M. Glackens began to contribute to Puck in the 1890s and remained with the magazine until 1914 when it was purchased by William Randolph Hearst. During his career at Puck, he created a variety of illustrations poking fun at politics and culture. Glackens’s work appeared in a wide range of magazines, books, and newspapers, and he was an early animator at the studios of Raoul Barré-William Nolan and John R. Bray after 1914.

REFERENCES: “Louis Glackens” at Illustration History (Norman Rockwell Museum) online; Puck, May 13, 1913 (Vol. LXXIII), [p. 1].

Item #9671

Price: $4,500.00

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