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January 3[edit]

Cartoon source please[edit]

I'm trying to find out where this cartoon originally appeared. It must be from 1877, when Pongo the young gorilla visited London, but the only place I can see it is on Wikimedia. I'd love to know the artist and publication if possible please. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Master_Pongo.jpg 185.190.95.205 (talk) 18:18, 3 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Could that be a vinegar valentine? This site shows a selection of and some are stylistically quite similar. --Wrongfilter (talk) 18:48, 3 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This book says:

Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins, who had sculpted the Crystal Palace dinosaurs in the 1850s, also lectured about gorillas in music halls and before sober scientific bodies. At each stop he decorated the stage with images of gorillas and a banner bearing Punch's satirical question, 'Am I not a man and a brother?'

So it seems to be from Punch (magazine). Alansplodge (talk) 23:08, 3 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In 1861, the British magazine Punch confronted its readers with an ape who apparently claimed human status using almost the same words as had appeared on Josiah Wedgwood's antislavery slogan “Am I Not a Man and a Brother?” [1] Alansplodge (talk) 23:10, 3 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Two steps forward, one back; this must have been an earlier cartoon because:

On 21 June 1876, a sensation arrived at the port of Liverpool from what is now Cabinda, Angola. M'Pungu, known in Britain as Master Pongo, was the first living gorilla (Gorilla gorilla) outside Africa to have been recognized as such. [2] Alansplodge (talk) 23:15, 3 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Another punch cartoon from 1844 can be seen here. The cartoon in question looks like a parody of that one and the others. I'm still with the vinegar valentine idea, because the poem explicitely references Valentine's day, and is characteristially insulting ("For he's a gorilla, and you are another"). I'm reminded of John Cooper Clarke's "Twat" now. --Wrongfilter (talk) 23:34, 3 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) No nearer, but this is interesting:

It was more fitting, though, given the gorilla’s place in the mass imagination, that the animal arrived in London in July 1877 on a summer-long lease to the Westminster Aquarium, a vast complex of stages, lecture halls and water tanks in the shadow of Big Ben... Physical descriptions of Pongo were more stridently racist... The Aquarium’s proximity to Parliament and Punch’s long-standing tradition of depicting Irishmen with simian features also inspired opponents of Charles Stewart Parnell, one of Home Rule’s most skilful advocates, to call him ‘Pongo’, while magazines published myriad jokes and cartoons about Pongo’s views on Irish topics. [3]

While the man in the cartoon in question bears no resemblance to Parnell, it might have been intended to represent a stereotypical Irishman? Fenianism was in the news in the 1870s. Alansplodge (talk) 23:45, 3 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think Irishness is intended: from my recollections of such cartoons, the facial features have only (over-)faint hints of those (the slightly long upper lip), and the clothes not at all. I also think Wrongfilter's suggestion is a good one. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 51.198.104.88 (talk) 08:02, 4 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Cartoons in Punch, such as this one, were not in colour and usually by (and signed by) well-known artists; moreover, the text was not in the form of a poem. It is unlikely this image appeared in Punch; if it did, the colours were added later. Vinegar Valentine cards, on the other hand, were typically in colour with a rhyming text. Here is the Monkeyana cartoon that allegedly appeared in Punch on 18 May 1861, although I did not find it in the Punch issue of that date. --Lambiam 23:52, 4 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Lambiam: The "Monkeyana" cartoon and accompanying poem appeared on page 206 of that edition, which appears to be missing from the volume to which you linked. DuncanHill (talk) 01:19, 5 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Here it is. DuncanHill (talk) 01:21, 5 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]