*No Limit,* the cover of *Puck’*s September 22, 1909, issue, by Louis M. Glackens.

*Theatre Designed for the “Tired Business Man,”* May 9, 1914.

*Top,* *The Yellow Press,* October 12, 1910; *above,* *Hurry Up Girls—Here Comes the Customers,* undated.

*In the Republican Dark-Room,* March 2, 1910.

*“The Flowers That Bloom in the Spring, Tra-La!,”* April 24, 1912.

Louis Tunes

A new monograph collects the eccentric, avant-garde illustrations of Louis M. Glackens, the satirical cartoonist and longtime staff artist at Puck

The Glackens name will ring a bell with art buffs and writers. William Glackens (1870–1938), a key figure in the Ashcan School, was known for his vibrant scenes of city life. His wife, Edith Dimock Glackens (1876–1955), painted witty, sometimes caustic watercolors. Their son, Ira, became a writer, and their daughter, Lenna, who died at 29, was an emerging artist. Meanwhile, William’s older brother, Louis M. Glackens, is often overlooked.

Maybe it’s because Louis’s work fell into that murky category of “commercial art,” though there was little about it that felt commercial. His illustrations were bizarre, satirical, and often a step ahead of their time. In 2023, The New York Times published his 1906 cartoon St. Anthony Comstock, the Village Nuisance in an Opinion piece about censorship. A year later, The New Criterion ran his illustration No Limit in a review of a book on vice.