The Emperor Norton Trust

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

RESEARCH • EDUCATION • ADVOCACY

Filtering by Tag: lithograph

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 Was a San Francisco Fixture Within 3 Years of Declaring His Reign

January 16, 2024  /  John Lumea

From the time that Joshua Norton publicly declared and signed himself “Norton I, Emperor of the United States” in his Proclamation published in the San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin of 17 September 1859, there was a more or less steady pulse of newspaper publications of his subsequent Proclamations — as well as newspaper reports of activities and sightings of the new Emperor.

But, at what point was there evidence of a separate public consciousness that this “Emperor Norton” might be a new character that was here to stay — a public awareness of the Emperor’s early ubiquity and fame?

When did Emperor Norton start to go meta?

Here, we document the earliest signs of local awareness that a new player had arrived on the urban stage.

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categories / Research, ARENA, Original sources
tags / fame, reputation, newspaper, report, editorial, humor, Art, cartoon, sketch, lithograph, T. Grob, Edward Jump, 1859, 1861, 1862, 1863

The Pantheonic Statuette of Norton I

May 30, 2023  /  John Lumea

It’s well known that souvenir photographs and lithographs of Emperor Norton were sold in San Francisco shops during the Emperor’s lifetime.

Norton biographer William Drury takes it considerably further to claim that, by the early 1870s, there was a whole cottage industry of “Emperor Norton statuettes, Emperor Norton dolls, Emperor Norton mugs and jugs, Emperor Norton Imperial Cigars” — and even that there were peddlers hawking Emperor Norton merch at his funeral.

I find no evidence to support much of what Drury asserts — but…

In 1877 — a couple of years before Emperor Norton died in 1880 — a German immigrant jeweler and sculptor in San Francisco created a highly accomplished statuette of the Emperor that deserves a much closer look than it has received.

Although there is no ready evidence that this nearly-two-foot-tall statuette was sold in shops, there is evidence to suggest that it was a fixture in San Francisco saloons — and even that the Emperor himself had a copy in his apartment.

Among other things, I document here the three known copies of the statuette and offer a glimpse into the life and work of the sculptor.

There even are cameo appearances from historians of Ancient Rome and the Oxford English Dictionary.

It’s a fascinating story, previously untold.

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categories / Research, Original sources, Tributes, ARENA
tags / Art, sculpture, statue, statuette, figurine, Herman J. Brand, Jonas Brand, jeweler, sculptor, plaster, medallion, token, charm, gold, saloon, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Society of California Pioneers, Wells Fargo History Museum, Santa Rosa Press Democrat, Allen Stanley Lane, William Drury, photograph, cabinet card, painting, lithograph, terra cotta, Pantheon, pantheonic, Rome, Oxford English Dictionary, 1862, 1865, 1867, 1868, 1869, 1872, 1876, 1877, 1878, 1879, 1880, 1881, 1883, 1906, 1921, 1930, 1935, 1939, 1986, 2021

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