Henry Major, 1889 - 1948 - Marcus Loew - c. 1925-30 - T-Shirt

A pencil caricature in profile shows the theatre magnate Marcus Loew, drawn with a large nose, a heavy jaw and a dense block of hatching at the shoulder.

Visual Elements & Composition

The drawing is built from loose, exaggerated line on pale cream paper, with graphite as the only other colour. The head faces right and fills the frame, its wide crown marked by short hatched strokes above and behind the ear. The nose projects forward in a broad, rounded mass and dominates the whole composition. Below it, the jaw sits low over a small, pressed mouth. A dark patch of diagonal hatching at the lower left describes a jacket or shoulder, anchoring the figure against open paper with no background. A handwritten inscription and signature sit to the right of the head, and the sheet keeps its octagonal cut-corner outline.

Meaning & Symbolism

The sitter was Marcus Loew, the New York entrepreneur who built a large chain of cinemas and theatres into one of the principal forces in American motion-picture exhibition in the early twentieth century. His theatres and their production arm, which later became part of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, made him a central figure in the business and social life of the period. Caricature works by exaggeration: the protruding nose and heavy lower face make the likeness readable at once, turning a powerful businessman into an emblem of commercial success. Henry Major (1889 to 1948) is credited as the maker, and the catalogue dates the drawing to about 1925 to 1930, when caricature portraits of business and entertainment figures were a common feature of magazines and newspapers.

Wearing the Drawing

A caricature reads best at close range, where the hatching and the handwritten note can be seen as marks made by one hand. On a tee, the profile sits across the chest, so the nose and jaw remain the first thing a viewer picks up, and the cut-corner sheet outline becomes a quiet frame for the wearer's own shape.