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Caricature
Cooke, George - Enlarge image
Caricature
- Date:
ca. 1907 (drawn)
- Artist/Maker:
Cooke, George (artist)
- Materials and Techniques:
Pen and ink and wash on paper
- Museum number:
S.393:51-2002
- Gallery location:
In Storage
This drawing is of Woody Kelly as a whiskered tramp character. He was performing at the Grand Theatre, Hanley, during the week of 10 June 1907. The act was billed as ‘Kelly and Gilette in the sketch “Fun in a Billiard Room”’. This is one of the many superb caricatures of Edwardian performers drawn by the graphic artist George Cooke and compiled in a series of albums. Woody Kelly is listed as a trampoline artist in a list of the performers in this collection. Although there is little to suggest this from the image, he may well be standing at a bar in the billiard room. Kelly was certainly not a top-billing star on the halls, but trampoline was a circus act by the late 19th century and it sometimes featured as an item in early 20th-century music hall.
The caricature comes from the second album of caricatures compiled by Cooke in a collection of albums owned by the V&A Theatre Collections. The artist labelled it ‘Geo Cooke HYS BOOKE’. It features music hall performers working in the 1900s.
