Bernhard Gillam
Influential American political cartoonist
Bernhard Gillam was an English-born American political cartoonist. Gillam was born in Banbury, Oxfordshire. He arrived in New York with his parents in 1866. He worked as a copyist in a lawyer's office, but switched to the study of engraving, and later, after some of his cartoons had appeared in the New York Graphic, turned to cartooning. His work appeared in Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, Harper's Weekly, where he worked with Thomas Nast during James A. Garfield's campaign of 1880, and Puck magazine where he came under the influence of Joseph Keppler. Gillam also produced work for Judge, a magazine of which he became director-in-chief in 1886. Gillam's cartoons on James G. Blaine during the 1884 US presidential campaign played a large part in Grover Cleveland's election to office. "Phryne before the Chicago Tribunal", also known as "The Tattooed Man", which appeared in the Puck issue of June 4, 1884, showed Blaine's body covered in tattoos detailing corruption charges from his political past. Blaine threatened legal action, but backed down on the advice of his political friends. According to Blaine biographer David Saville Muzzey, "it is doubtful if any cartoon in our history ever had the vogue and influence of Gillam's Tattooed Man." Oddly, Gillam was a Republican who voted for Blaine in 1884. During the presidential campaigns of 1888 and 1892, Gillam's cartoons depicted the dangers of the free-trade policy of the Democrats and the benefits of Republican protectionism. Bernhard Gillam died in Canajoharie, New York, of typhoid fever in 1896.
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Influenced by
- Joseph Keppler Source
Artworks by this artist (73 total)
- William Tell Cleveland will not bow to the hat 1883
- Let the political army have new drums also! 1883
- A great past and a pitiful present 1885
- Building the ark 1884
- The slave-market of to-day 1884
- Who killed Hancock 1883
- The political Courtney 1884
- Mr. Hill tries it on 1885
- Put ’em on ice! 1883
- They saw their ‘Flying Dutchman’ – it crossed their path, and they were lost 1885
- The pig has the pull 1885
- ‘The sleeping party’ 1885
- Why they dislike him — he will not prove himself a cat’s-paw in the enterprise 1884
- Gulliver and the party Liliputians — they cannot bind him 1885
- The new leader and the old chorus 1885
- Out of the frying-pan into the fire 1884
- The olympus of corruption – ‘Apollo strikes the lyre and charms the gods’ 1884
- His boasted magnetism – and the kind of metal it attracts 1884
- ‘Ship-building for repairs’ 1885
- The rehabilitation of the Democratic party 1885