Twenty-two-year-old Ignacy Jan Paderewski (November 18, 1860 – June 29, 1941) was already a rock star when he performed a concert for the opening of the 1893 World’s Fair. The Polish pianist’s adoring fans—enchanted as much by his luxuriant red locks as by his charismatic keyboard performance—succumbed to “Paddymania.”
His distinguishing coiffure made Paderewski a common subject of caricatures and cartoons. One example places him back at the World’s Columbian Exposition, where one denizen of the Midway Plaisance was instantly attracted to the pianist’s unwieldy mass of red hair. Cartoonist A. S. Daggy apparently had little familiarity with his setting in the Street in Cairo attraction, instead drawing simple circus tents in the background.
Daggy drew this comic strip for H. L. Cassard’s Comic Sketch Club, a Baltimore-based syndicate of dozens of comic artists supplying art for newspapers across the country. [Moore and Gabriele 176–77] Augustus Smith Daggy (1858–1942) contributed art to several notable periodicals of the era, including Puck, Life, and Harper’s Round Table, and later in life became known for his post-impressionistic paintings.
The comic “Paderewski and the Camel” appeared on Sunday, August 6, 1893, in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Saint Paul Globe, and Philadelphia Times.
SOURCES
“Local Landscapses Inspired Father, Son Painters” Albany (NY) Times-Union, Mar. 30, 2015.
Moore, Paul S.; Gabriele, Sandra The Sunday Paper: A Media History. University of Illinois Press, 2022.