In a page of comic drawings by Frank Bellew, ostensibly his ‘Sketches in the New York Aquarium’, yet another joke about Darwin’s simian connections makes an appearance. ‘The Chimpanzee’ sits on a fancy bed amid the straw scattered in its enclosure, and is watched through the glass by a visitor with a monkey-like face. ‘How are you Darwin?’ it enquires. In the inscriptions at the top, the chimpanzee is labelled ‘Flirtation’ and ‘Darwin’ is ‘Sentiment’. Bellew was an illustrator and cartoonist who contributed regularly to Harper’s Weekly and a number of comic journals, often with a lighter style than that of Thomas Nast.
- physical location British Library (also Library of the University of Michigan and elsewhere)
- accession or collection number BL General Reference Collection LOU.A107
- copyright holder British Library
- originator of image Frank Bellew
- date of creation May 1878
- computer-readable date c. 1878-05-01 to 1878-05-10
- medium and material wood engraving
- references and bibliography ‘Sketches in the New York Aquarium’, Harper’s Weekly, 22:1115 (11 May 1878), p. 368. J. van Wyhe, ‘Iconography’, p. 187.
