Comments on: Looking for an unusually talented dancing bear.

Question: Looking for an unusually talented dancing bear.

OverlappingElvis — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 15:16:05 -0800

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.

By: JanetLand

JanetLand — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 16:02:11 -0800

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.

By: ldenneau

ldenneau — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 16:36:17 -0800

Is it this image?

By: bendybendy

bendybendy — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 21:20:10 -0800

I remember the 1898 book The Arkansas Bear as having a bear that played the violin, and these previews seem to bear me out

By: unixrat

unixrat — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 21:30:07 -0800

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...

By: bendybendy

bendybendy — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 21:30:52 -0800

Hmm, dancing bear with violin, and some awful racist caricatures....I didn't remember that part.