Looking for an unusually talented dancing bear.

August 8, 2006 3:16 PM

I've been looking for a reproduction of a specifc woodcut of a dancing bear playing the violin for a long time (years and years) and I've almost given up hope - can anyone help me find it?

Specifically, what I'm looking for is a woodcut or an engraving of a dancing bear playing the violin, from some very old book (no idea what the book actually was) that I read or looked at when I was very young. I've always had trouble describing it well enough to track it down. Google has let me down time and time again, and I'm only asking here on the off chance that someone else has seen this picture, knows where it's from, and has an idea about how I can track it down. The only other clues I can give is that the style is very rough, and the book had other reproductions of small pictures from several hundred years ago. I know this isn't a very detailed question and there's not much to go on, but this is the absolute last place I can think of to try.

posted by OverlappingElvis to media & arts (5 comments total)

Was it a children's book? Perhaps you could try asking several children's librarians, or a used book store that specializes in children's antiquarian books.
posted by JanetLand at 4:02 PM on August 8, 2006

Is it this image?
posted by ldenneau at 4:36 PM on August 8, 2006

I remember the 1898 book The Arkansas Bear as having a bear that played the violin, and these previews seem to bear me out
posted by bendybendy at 9:20 PM on August 8, 2006

I think I know of what image you're talking about. Is the bear roughly almond-shaped, vertically? With the violin pointing downwards?

If it is, this may kill me because I know I've encountered it a few times recently, but I have no idea where...
posted by unixrat at 9:30 PM on August 8, 2006

Hmm, dancing bear with violin, and some awful racist caricatures....I didn't remember that part.
posted by bendybendy at 9:30 PM on August 8, 2006