Thomas Nast's Christmas Drawings by Thomas Nast

Author:Thomas Nast
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780486155364
Publisher: Dover Publications
Published: 2012-10-06T00:00:00+00:00

Following the publication of his Christmas Drawings in 1890, Thomas Nast spent a great deal of his time in his studio at home painting in oils. Most of his pictures had to do with Civil War subjects, many of them based on sketches he had made as a Civil War correspondent years earlier. Had he followed his early aspiration to become a painter, Thomas Nast might well have gained eminence in that field rather than as a cartoonist. Critics have acknowledged that his paintings, while they appear labored, have a heavy power and deserve more recognition than they have received. Several of his paintings were exhibited, and some still hang, in important libraries and art galleries around the country. Old friends commissioned much of this work and while payments were liberal, income from this source was insufficient to support his family.

What bothered the artist most as the century came to a close was that he was still heavily in debt and could no longer be as generous to his family and friends as he had been during his more affluent years.

In 1901, Theodore Roosevelt succeeded to the Presidency of the United States. Roosevelt had long admired Nast for the fighting spirit they both shared and, wishing to help him in his adversity, offered him an appointment as Consul General in Ecuador. It was not an assignment that appealed to the artist, but, desperately in need of funds, he accepted. He sailed alone from New York in July 1902, leaving behind a family and home that he would never see again. Guayaquil, the principal port of Ecuador where the Consulate was located, had recently been ravaged by fire. Nast was sixty years old at the time and the climate would have been difficult for a much younger man to endure. In addition, sanitary conditions were poor and yellow fever was prevalent. On December 1 he contracted the fever. On December 7 he died, but not before he had sent home enough money to pay off his debts.

Over half a century after his death Thomas Nast’s home, Villa Fontana in Morristown, was designated a National Historic Landmark and the Thomas Nast Christmas Village on the Morristown Green is now the center of attraction during the holiday season. Here children delight in viewing the life-size reproductions and animated replicas of the artist’s Christmas drawings that are part of a permanent exhibit.

In 1956 the U.S. State Department placed a memorial plaque on the barracks where Thomas Nast was born as a “gift to the German people in friendship and in memory of Thomas Nast.” And to further demonstrate that the city of his birth has not forgotten him, Landau/Pfalz, as it is now called, in December 1977 held a two-day festival in his memory. On the 7th, German and American dignitaries joined to honor him on the seventy-fifth anniversary of his death. Bands played, speeches were made and wreaths were laid. And, not unmindful of the importance of Santa Claus in the life of Thomas Nast, Santa shared the honors with him on St.

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