Crossroads of Curiosity

"The Gin-Blossomed Businessman"

 

 

David Normal:

 

Gin-blossomed, overwrought with responsibilities, a successful businessman, a pillar of society, philanthropist, Freemason, etc., and burdened with feckless dreamers for progeny - a classic bourgeois patriarch whose quiet despair gives way to riotous bohemianism in his children. To his right, his son the mystic artist with the temperament of a Prince Myshkin, and to his left self-indulgent dandy brothers, more dapper and suave though no less smug than Tweedledee and Tweedledum. Finding no solace in his sons, but rather a hopeless financial burden, in desperation he seeks to exit the picture and join the world we live in.

 

 

Image taken from page 129 of 'Illustrated Penny Tales. From the “Strand” Library. no. 1-10'Collection of the British Library.

View illustration on British Library's Flickr Photostream

 

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