Page 107 - Swann Galleries - Printed & Manuscript African Americana- Sale 2308 - March 21, 2013

172 ● (ART.) K, G.F. [UNKNOWN.] 16 Original pencil drawings for a
“Blackville” Series, drawn for Shober & Carqueville, Lithographers. Pencil on
heavy cardboard stock, 12 x 16 inches (average size); some smudging; light edge-wear, not
affecting the images; paper evenly toned; some signs on the reverse of some of having been
attached to something else (?) perhaps previously framed. SHOULD DEFINITELY BE SEEN.
Chicago: Shober & Carqueville, circa 1880-1900 [10,000/15,000]
AN EXTRAORDINARY COLLECTION OF ORIGINAL PENCIL DRAWINGS, FOR THE MOST
PART WITH SPORTING THEMES THAT APPARENTLY WERE NEVER PUBLISHED. Shober and
Carqueville, lithographers, whose name and “copyright applied for” appears on all of these
drawings were in business from approximately 1875 to 1890. And it would seem that they
were trying to get a “piece” of what was becoming a very popular and lucrative market. The
boom in “Black Memorabilia” began in earnest following the Civil War. While there had been
ample caricature of blacks in such series as H.W. Clay’s Life in Philadelphia, and their English
counterpart, Tregear’s “Black Jokes;” the machinery of social divisiveness saw its true begin-
nings during Reconstruction. The thought that four million people were suddenly free, and that
a substantial portion of them would be looking for work, brought with it a tremendous amount
of resentment. The same working class men who had been forced into uniform, were now com-
peting with blacks for menial jobs. While the artwork here and in Currier and Ives
“Blackville” caricatures were not meant to demean, the veritable “tsunami” of caricature that
entered advertising, as well as toys, games, and household products certainly painted a picture of
a people who were of lazy, inept and at best good for a laugh. The perpetuation of this kind of
imagery definitely had an effect on white people’s attitudes about blacks well into the twentieth
century and into the modern Civil Rights era.
Unfortunately, we were unable to identify the artist, “G.F.K”, but it is certainly clear that
whoever he or she was, had been classically trained. These drawings are more complex and of a
better quality than those used by Currier and Ives, and it might be that their complexity may
have been the very reason that they were not engraved and used.