Rabbits

A bear labeled “Taft,” a wolf labeled “Fairbanks,” a fox labeled “Cortelyou,” and a cat labeled “Knox” chase a “Republican nomination” bunny into the “T.R.” tent. Beside the tent is a gun, a “big stick,” and a cowboy hat.

comments and context

Comments and Context

The redoubtable T. S. Sullivant, a cartoonist admired by contemporaries and later generations of cartoon scholars, hit closer with his trademark depiction of animals than the concept of this cartoon. The political-cartooning portion of his career, roughly 1904-1910, was devoted to the daily editorial pages of newspapers in the Hearst chain. Those newspapers have been insufficiently preserved and studied, and therefore Sullivant’s work of these years largely is unknown.

President Roosevelt tells his son Kermit that Eli the macaw does not like the carpenters working at the White House and had to be moved. There is a bull dog puppy where the family is now and he sees lots of young rabbits when he is out riding. Roosevelt says he took a walk with General Leonard Wood recently.

Collection

Harvard College Library

Creation Date

1902-06-22

Theodore Roosevelt believes the dogs Susan and Jack had no business to attack the fox terrier and is always sorry when one of them catches a bunny. He is glad Ethel went over to Cooper’s Bluff.

Collection

Harvard College Library

Creation Date

1900-09-14

A fashionably dressed young woman is being escorted by a rabbit and a young child dressed in a red suit. The woman looks back over her shoulder at three unhappy monks standing outside a stone church or monastery.

comments and context

Comments and Context

Puck scarcely took second place to any of its contemporary weekly or monthly rival magazines when holiday themes and seasonal issues took prominence. In Puck‘s early and purely political years, comments on Lent, Easter, and Christmas were highlighted less, frequently relegated to back pages. But during the Belle Epoque, and when Art Nouveau, Impressionism, Japonisme, and the “poster style” of advertisements and covers predominated, Puck was a player.

A young woman plays a lute as a group of rabbit cavaliers dance around her. In the background, two monks whisper to each other at the entrance to a monastery.

comments and context

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

A little girl takes all the colored eggs from the Easter Bunny’s basket. She is putting them in her apron, but some have fallen on the ground and are broken. A hen wearing a bonnet is in the background.

comments and context

Comments and Context

Puck‘s annual Springtime/Easter issue was graced with a poster-like design by L. M. Glackens. This was one its most attractive covers at a time when social themes, humorous drawings and jokes, and decorative holiday-inspired artwork insinuated themselves on covers. With the flat-color background and silhouetted figures, the drawing has a feel of Japonisme — then a reigning “look” in poster art in the United States, Europe, and of course Japan.

A young woman walks arm in arm with a rabbit carrying a basket of Easter eggs. A tonsured monk standing in the background is startled by what he sees.

comments and context

Comments and Context

Humor magazines of the day frequently published Easter issues or focused on seasonal themes which were seldom religious in nature. In this case, either a dreaded Lenten sacrifices, or the end of such strictures. Cartoonist L. M. Glackens was beginning his role as a major staff member on Puck at this time. After a decade drawing magazine cartoons, he entered the nascent animated-cartoon field. His brother William Glackens was a member of “The Eight,” or the “Ashcan School,” major Post-Impressionist and Naturalist schools of American art.

President Roosevelt describes to Quentin that while he was out riding, he came across a rabbit and terrapin in the road which resembled the characters in the story of “B’rer Rabbit.” Roosevelt draws a rabbit and turtle on the bottom of the letter.

Collection

Sagamore Hill National Historic Site

Creation Date

1904-06-21

Puck, wearing the bright red outfit of a musketeer, walks between two rabbits who are each carrying an Easter egg. A tonsured monk in a cowl, reading a Bible or missal, occupies the foreground.

comments and context

Comments and Context

Throughout virtually all of its life, Puck magazine published special issues with non-political covers for Christmas, Easter, “Mid-Summer,” and occasionally Thanksgiving numbers.

Photograph showing Quentin Roosevelt at a rabbit hutch at Sagamore Hill.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1904

Theodore Roosevelt’s secretary will bring to Roosevelt’s attention the enclosed letter and rabbit’s foot from Matthew Hale.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1912-05-16

Theodore Roosevelt’s secretary thanks Dr. Von Gomez, on Roosevelt’s behalf, for sending the rabbit bone.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1911-04-24

Theodore Roosevelt writes to Witmer Stone, editor of The Auk, regarding a recent article that inaccurately criticized Roosevelt’s prior work on “concealing coloration” and “counter-shading” in response to Abbot Handerson Thayer, including in African Game Trails. Roosevelt also defends photographs he had taken of birds.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1912-11-22

President Roosevelt thanks Henry P. Bridges for the turkeys, and wishes he had been hunting with him.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1907-11-27

President Roosevelt hopes that his son Theodore Roosevelt gets to play in the football game between Harvard and Yale. He asks about the athletic achievements of his classmates. There is nothing of interest to report from the White House, although Archibald Roosevelt went hunting with Presley Marion Rixey, took two shots at a rabbit, and missed. Robert Bacon is doing well under Secretary of State Elihu Root.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1905-11-06

Assistant Secretary of the Navy Roosevelt informs Ellen A. L. Gray they have received the photograph of Anna Bulloch Gracie she sent, but her letter to his son, Theodore Roosevelt, was lost, and he asks her to send him another. Roosevelt informs Gray his children are upset over the death of their white rabbit and they have held a funeral for it and buried it at Sagamore Hill.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1897-05-22

Theodore Roosevelt was interested in Edward William Nelson’s article on rabbits. He encloses a letter that he thinks might amuse Nelson.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1911-02-03

President Roosevelt holds a “reform” gun and aims at a rabbit labeled “Congress” that is running toward a “Mar. 4” rock.

comments and context

Comments and Context

One of America’s great political cartoonists, J. H. Donahey of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, by 1908 and roughly a decade of work behind him, had come into his own. His concepts invariably were simple but incisive; and his drawings direct and handsome — here, making an arresting composition from a hunter, rocks, and a rabbit, no background except his trademark shading — a “look” that was copied by many of his peers in cartooning.

The race for the Republican presidential nomination is underway between the tortoise labeled “Morton” and the hare(s) labeled “McKinley, Reed, [and] Harrison.” Includes a revised version of the fable by Aesop.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1895-04-10

Print shows a young messenger boy asking a fashionably dressed young woman to sign for the delivery of her Easter bonnet.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1899-04-05