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Caricature
Cooke, George - Enlarge image
Caricature
- Place of origin:
Hanley, England (made)
- Date:
December 1904 (drawn)
- Artist/Maker:
Cooke, George (artist)
- Materials and Techniques:
Pen and ink and wash on paper
- Museum number:
S.392:38-2002
- Gallery location:
In Storage
This caricature is of the comedian Edwin Boyde performing the sketch ‘Bread and Jam’ at the Grand Theatre of Varieties, Hanley, during the week of 12 December 1904. He was billed enthusiastically as ‘London’s Greatest Comedian’. From all the principal London music halls’. This 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. He compiled them in a series of albums.
Boyde had topped the bill at the Grand the previous February, when his act went down very well. His comic ‘ditty’ based on the breakfast table and his slapstick sketch about an old man in a lodging house, who holds a big slab of bread and jam, into which he is pushed face down by fellow lodgers, were particularly popular. Cooke features Boyde again in the frontispiece illustration to this album of caricatures. Boyde was popular at Hanley, returning in October 1905 and 1906. He died in October 1909, aged 39.
