Name Frank Bellew | Died June 29, 1888 | |
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Books The Art of Amusing - Being a Collection of Graceful Arts, Merry Games, Odd - Tricks, Curious Puzzles, and New Charades - The Original Classic Edition | ||
Frank Henry Temple Bellew (April 18, 1828 – June 29, 1888), American artist, illustrator, and cartoonist.
Contents
Personal
Bellew was born in Cawnpore, India, in 1828, the son of Francis-John Bellew, a British officer, and Anne Smoult Temple, of Hylton Castle.
Father of Frank P.W. Bellew, who signed his work "Chip," as in "chip off the old block."
Career
Bellew worked for most of the notable publications of his time, including Frank Leslie's Illustrated, Harper's Monthly, Harper's Weekly, Harper's Bazaar, St.Nicholas, and humor magazines such as The Lantern, The New York Picayune, Vanity Fair (US, 1859-1863), The Funniest of Phun, Wild Oats, Puck, Judge, and the comic Life.
Bellew came to New York from England in 1850 and worked in the city his entire career. In 1931 Time magazine credited Bellew with having drawn the first Uncle Sam for a cartoon in an 1852 issue of The Lantern. This claim was discredited by Alton Ketchum in his book Uncle Sam: The Man and the Legend (Hill and Wang, 1959), in which he traced the first depiction of Uncle Sam back to a cartoon in 1832.
Bellew's November 26, 1864, Harper's Weekly caricature of Abraham Lincoln, "Long Abraham Lincoln a Little Longer," exaggerating the height and thinness of the president to absurd extremes, was very popular.
Friendships
Because his wife's family lived briefly in Concord, Massachusetts, Bellew knew and socialized with Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, who visited Bellew once at his studio on Broadway in New York City.
Thoreau and Bellew discussed philosophical matters, as Thoreau recorded in his Journals on October 19, 1855:
Talking with Bellew this evening about Fourierism and communities, I said that I suspected any enterprise in which two were engaged together. "But," said he, "it is difficult to make a stick stand unless you slant two or more against it." "Oh, no," answered I, "you may split its lower end into three, or drive it single into the ground, which is the best way; but most men, when they start on a new enterprise, not only figuratively, but really, pull up stakes. When the sticks prop one another, none, or only one, stands erect."