Nast, Thomas
Nast, Thomas 1840-1902
Thomas Nast both drove and commented on the most pressing questions of his age through evocative engravings and cartoons. Highlighting nationalism, political corruption, and urban poverty, Nast launched a new means of communication that appealed to and touched an entire nation.
Nast gained fame with Harper’s Weekly magazine, where he worked from 1859 until 1886. Reflecting his emotional responses to the carnage he saw as a war correspondent, Nast’s engravings went beyond reporting and into the realm of the visual editorial. Vivid engravings of the battles of the Civil War (1861–1865), the patriotic sacrifice needed to preserve the Union, and the harsh realities of slavery made the war real to the average citizen and inspired them to service. One of his most representative images shows Columbia weeping as a tattered Union amputee shakes the hand of a refined Southern soldier. Called “Compromise with the South,” this use of allegory and warnings against the sacrifice of right in the name of expediency became a powerful tool for the Republican campaign to re-elect President Abraham Lincoln.
As the war ended, Nast turned to immigration, political corruption, and free silver as ripe ground for his images. Moving from commentary to activism, Nast’s work unmasked the political corruption behind the “party boss” system and helped imprison New York’s infamous Boss Tweed. In a series of cartoons from 1869 to 1872, the artist openly accused Tweed of rigging elections and accepting bribes, all while giving a moral slant to the subject that turned the public against the iron-fisted leader. The power of Nast’s imagery is best expressed by a quote attributed to Tweed himself: “Stop the damned pictures … my constituents can’t read, but, damn it, they can see pictures” (Fischer 1996, p. 2). In this age of immigration, emotional images appealed to an urban citizenry that was often illiterate yet anxious to make their way in a new country.
Nast aptly demonstrated the role of political cartoons in electoral campaigns. In 1872 his visual barrage of cartoons contributed to the defeat of Horace Greeley’s run against Ulysses S. Grant. By 1876, his support for Rutherford B. Hayes propelled the candidate to the presidency. The power of Nast’s aura is undeniable: His candidates won seven consecutive presidential elections and his images of the elephant and donkey battles have currency in the twenty-first century.
Depicting a clear line between good and evil, Nast’s style was pedantic, explicit, and expressed a definitive right-wing stance. His harsh black-and-white lines and crosshatchings for Harper’s Weekly stood in stark contrast to the more subtle irony in his competitors’ illustrations for Puck magazine. Nevertheless, Nast’s methods redefined the political cartoon medium. Instead of relying on the talking bubbles of the eighteenth century, he liberally incorporated labels and allegory to emphasize the character and ideas of his subjects. His ultrarealistic style instantly made a point without requiring lengthy analysis from his audience, a quality still admired in cartoonists in the early twenty-first century. Through Nast’s efforts, the political cartoon stepped out of the shadow of commentary and into the realm of activism, where it remains today.
SEE ALSO Cartoons, Political; Media; U.S. Civil War
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Fischer, Roger A. 1996. Them Damned Pictures: Exploration in American Political Cartoon Art. North Haven, CT: Archon Book.
Keller, Morton. 1975. The Art and Politics of Thomas Nast. New York: Oxford University Press.
Paine, Albert Bigelow. 1974. Thomas Nast: His Period and His Pictures. Princeton, NJ: Pyne Press.
Starr, Roger. Thomas Nast: America’s Premier Political Cartoonist. http://www.city-journal.org/article02.php?aid=1417.
Rita B. Trivedi