The Gentle Gorilla

Ernest Griset

1867

Wood engraving by the Dalziel Brothers

10 x 7½ inches

Illustration for Griset’s Grotesques, p.93.

Apes for men: as Hood’s verse remarks, no ‘rich city man’ is more warmly welcomed home than ‘Mr Gorilla’ (p.92). Griset’s design is both amusing and infused with anxiety, a comic reflection on Darwin’s evolutionary claims which also has a racial dimension in the period when Africa was being colonized.

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Scanned image and text by Simon Cooke.

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