The Emperor Norton Trust

TO HONOR THE LIFE + ADVANCE THE LEGACY OF JOSHUA ABRAHAM NORTON

RESEARCH • EDUCATION • ADVOCACY

Filtering by Tag: George Washington II

Revealing the Obscure Publishing Origin of an Early Engraving of Emperor Norton

June 12, 2025  /  John Lumea

In summer 2016, The Emperor Norton Trust launched its digital ARchive of Emperor Norton in the Arts (ARENA) with 40-some images — including an intriguing illustration featuring Emperor Norton that appeared to be an early engraving created during the Emperor's lifetime.

The illustration appears in the 1964 book The Forgotten Characters of San Francisco. But, apart from a credit to Robert Grannis Cowan — the son of Robert Ernest Cowan (1862–1942), whose title essay anchors the book, and also apparently (the younger Cowan) the private owner of the illustration who gave permission for it to be reproduced — the book provides no details about the artist, original source, or provenance of the illustration.

For the last nine years, this has been the extent of our knowledge about this work. 

A few weeks ago, seeking intelligence about an elusive cabinet card of Emperor Norton, I requested from the Society of California Pioneers some catalog information about the Emperor-related items in the organization’s collection.

Included in the information the Society sent to me was an unbidden clue about the enigmatic illustration — a clue that has enabled me to solve the mystery and, in the process, crack a window into the the elusive history of one of San Francisco’s most influential early engravers and one of the city’s earliest satirical magazines.

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categories / Research, Original sources, ARENA
tags / Art, illustration, engraving, magazine, Pascal Loomis, Puck (San Francisco magazine), James F. Swift, Clay Street, Harrison Eastman, Hutching's California Magazine, Forgotten Characters of San Francisco, Ward Ritchie Press, Robert Grannis Cowan, lithograph, George Washington II, monogram, 1861, 1862, 1865, 1866, 1964

The Emperor Norton Cartoon That Got the Jump on Jump

March 28, 2024  /  John Lumea

Ask any careful student of the Emperor Norton story to name the most famous early cartoonist of the Emperor and they are likely to single out Edward Jump (1832–1883). They would be right about that.

They might go on to credit Jump as the first artist to depict Emperor Norton with the dogs Bummer and Lazarus. About this they would be wrong.

It's true that, in the early 1860s, Jump created three cartoons that featured the Emperor and the dogs in the same scene — and that these cartoons have been influential in associating the Emp with Bummer and Lazarus in the popular imagination.

But, Jump was not the first artist to make this connection. 

That distinction goes to someone who was not even a cartoonist by profession — but whose lithographed and published cartoon, apparently sold as a standalone sheet, showing Bummer and Lazarus sitting near Emperor Norton predates by as much as a year or more Jump's earliest cartoon showing these characters together.

This is the story of the artist and the cartoon that appear to be Edward Jump's conceptual influencer.

That we are aware, this is the first time the story has been told.

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categories / Research, Original sources, ARENA
tags / Art, artist, comic, cartoon, caricature, R.M. Evans, Edward Jump, Benjamin Franklin Butler, Benjamin F. Butler, B.F. Butler, Tompson in a Quandary, lithograph, lithographer, Bummer & Lazarus, George Washington II, Frederick Coombs, James Tompson, 1861, 1862, 1863

Emperor Norton in the Artistic Taxonomy of Antonio Sotomayor

May 06, 2020  /  John Lumea

The Emperor Norton mural in The Pied Piper, at the Palace Hotel, in San Francisco — painted by the city’s longtime “artist laureate,” Antonio Sotomayor (1904–1985) — is one of the best-known and -loved Emperor-themed works of art.

A newly discovered art-historical survey done for the San Francisco Arts Commission in 1953 offers an elusive date for the painting — and a new way of seeing it.

Includes rarely seen photographs.

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categories / Research, Original sources, ARENA, Tributes, Legacy, Places
tags / art, mural, Antonio Sotomayor, Palace Hotel, Pied Piper, Happy Valley Room, San Francisco Arts Commission, Martin Snipper, Mark Twain, Bret Harte, The Great Unknown, Lotta Crabtree, Frederick Coombs, George Washington II, 1935, 1953

Oofty Goofty Wore a Leather Pad in His Pants

August 30, 2019  /  John Lumea

Accounts of Emperor Norton often note that he is the most famous of a larger cast of Public Characters that peopled the streets of San Francisco during his lifetime.

But, with the exception of Frederick Coombs a.k.a. George Washington II, the biographical particulars of these Characters — legal names; dates of birth and death; and exactly when, and for how long, they were in San Francisco — often are left in clouds of ambiguity.

As it happens, one of the most famous Characters mentioned in connection with Emperor Norton didn’t even arrive in San Francisco until three or four years after the Emperor’s death.

Harvested from contemporaneous newspaper accounts, this timeline of five of the Characters most often associated with Emperor Norton — The Money King; George Washington II; The Great Unknown; The King of Pain; and Oofty Goofty — fills in many biographical blanks and finds surprising new details about the careers of these legendary figures.

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categories / Original sources, Research
tags / public character, street character, Abraham King, Money King, Frederick Coombs, George Washington II, Friedrich Wilhelm Frohm, William Fromm, The Great Unknown, J.J. McBride, George McBride Lawrence, King of Pain, Leonard Borchardt, Oofty Goofty

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