Morris County - Morristown - Illustrating an Icon: Thomas Nast’s Uncle Sam
Now Showing in our Thomas Nast Gallery Illustrating an Icon: Thomas Nast’s Uncle Sam February-mid-July 2019 Thomas Nast (1840-1902) is credited with popularizing the image of Uncle Sam. Decades before James Montgomery Flagg (1877-1960) created the “I Want You” image of Uncle Sam for United States Army recruiting posters in 1917, Nast had drawn this iconic symbol of the United States more than 160 times for Harper’s Weekly . Like his Democratic Donkey and Republican Elephant, Nast’s Uncle Sam is adapted from earlier examples. In the late eighteenth and through the nineteenth centuries, Americans identified with “everyman” characters known as Brother Jonathan and Yankee Doodle. Brother Jonathan was depicted typically as portly and wearing a brown homespun suit, while Yankee Doodle wore stars and stripes. During the War of 1812, government supplies marked “U.S.” were nicknamed Uncle Sam. Sam Wilson, a meatpacker from Troy, New York known locally as “Uncle Sam,” sold beef to the Army....