TO HONOR THE LIFE + ADVANCE THE LEGACY OF JOSHUA ABRAHAM NORTON
RESEARCH • EDUCATION • ADVOCACY
Emperor Norton and the fear-mongering, violence-inciting demagogue Denis Kearney were on opposite sides of California’s “Chinese question.” But, in December 1879, the two men were depicted together on the back cover of The San Francisco Illustrated Wasp, in a cartoon by George Frederick Keller.
The cartoon spoke volumes about the Emperor’s moral stature.
Read MoreA wonderful illustration of Emperor Norton featured by the San Francisco Bulletin newspaper in 1913 and the California Review monthly in 1904 got its start as part of a triptych of “Prominent Men of San Francisco” drawn by George Frederick Keller (1846–1927) in c.1874, as the Emperor was reaching the height of his imperial influence and becoming a nationally known figure.
Not long after this, in 1876, Keller came to prominence as the chief artist of the new San Francisco Wasp, a position that briefly would earn him both fame and notoriety as one of the leading political cartoonists of his day.
The full story is in the flip — including high-resolution wonders that The Emperor’s Bridge Campaign is pleased to present online for the first time.
Read MoreFor Emperor Norton Day 2017, a look at how — in both art and prose — the San Francisco Illustrated Wasp paid tribute to the Emperor on 17 January 1880, nine days after his death.
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