Uncle Sam's Annual Celebration, Fire-Works of the Period, from "The Judge"

Uncle Sam's Annual Celebration, Fire-Works of the Period, from "The Judge"

Thomas B. Worth

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This caricature appeared in the New York weekly The Judge soon after its 1881 launch; the publication was formed by artists who seceded from Puck Magazine. Centered on an inebriated Uncle Sam, the image suggests a country gone astray. Wearing a suit tailored out of the national flag, the goateed, top-hatted figure steadies himself against a disapproving statue of George Washington, fires a pistol, and waves a scroll inscribed with the words "4th [of] July Oration." Buzzing fireworks in the sky point to controversies of the moment—"Intemperance," "Mormonism," "Wall Street," and "Toy Guns." Mormon polygamy was widely debated in the early 1880s, and newspapers often reported statistics of boys injured by toy guns sold as harmless playthings.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Uncle Sam's Annual Celebration, Fire-Works of the Period, from "The Judge"Uncle Sam's Annual Celebration, Fire-Works of the Period, from "The Judge"Uncle Sam's Annual Celebration, Fire-Works of the Period, from "The Judge"Uncle Sam's Annual Celebration, Fire-Works of the Period, from "The Judge"Uncle Sam's Annual Celebration, Fire-Works of the Period, from "The Judge"

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.