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.
The brothers were close, and both had a sense of humor. William and Edith named their dog Imp; Louis found his stride at Puck, the rowdy, full-color satire magazine that skewered Gilded Age politics with elephant Republicans, donkey Democrats, and the occasional ecclesiastical figure in drag.
Born in Pennsylvania in 1866, Louis started young—caricaturing teachers at Central High School. That early eye for absurdity led to a career. His time at Puck began in the 1890s, and between 1900 and 1903 he published a series called In Colonial Days, which reimagined the Puritans and Founding Fathers in comically mundane scenarios—dancing jigs and gossiping over fences—at the height of America’s Colonial Revival craze.
By the 1910s, he’d moved into animation, working with Bray Studios, Pathé Studios, and Sullivan Studios on some of the earliest cartoons. His images were still strange: theaters full of exhausted businessmen reclined on futon beds, or American travelers lugging money bags the size of small children.
The book Louis M. Glackens: Pure Imagination offers up the invention and charm of Louis’s world. “Full of humor and imagination, they flowed from his pencil like water from a tap,” his nephew, Ira, once wrote of his visions. “Like Shakespeare, he never blotted a line.” —Elena Clavarino
Elena Clavarino is the Senior Editor at air mail
