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Caricature
Cooke, George - Enlarge image
Caricature
- Date:
ca. 1904 (drawn)
- Artist/Maker:
Cooke, George (artist)
- Materials and Techniques:
Pen and ink and wash on paper
- Museum number:
S.392:23-2002
- Gallery location:
In Storage
This caricature is of the black American dancer Billy Farrell performing at Collins’ Hippodrome, Stoke-on-Trent, during the week of 17 October 1904. He was billed as ‘The Great Creole Artist! Absolutely the Creator of the Cake Walk, Billy Farrell, the Best in his Own Peculiar Line’. It is one of the many superb caricatures of Edwardian music hall performers that were drawn by the artist George Cooke when he was based at the Grand Theatre of Varieties, Hanley. He compiled them in a series of albums.
Billy Farrell introduced the ‘cake-walk’ dance into American vaudeville at the Grand Opera House in Brooklyn in 1886, and a few years later into British music hall at the Alhambra Theatre. He was also a singer, associated with the songs ‘Little Black Me’ and ‘The New Cake Walk’. His association with the dance explains this image of him dancing with a cake, and its title, ‘The Man Who Made the Cake Walk’.
