William Holbrook Beard

In 1823, an anonymous poem appeared in the Troy Sentinel, a newspaper in industrial upstate New York. It was later credited to Clement Clarke Moore, a New Yorker of distinguished lineage who was a biblical scholar at Columbia College. Clarke acknowledged that he had composed A Visit from Saint Nicholas as a Christmas gift for his children, spinning a tale in which the sober Dutch bishop Saint Nicholas was now “chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf.” More engaging by far was his means of transportation: “a miniature sleigh and eight tiny reindeer.” From the moment of its publication, the poem became an American favorite, conjuring a Santa Claus who slid down chimneys with a sack full of toys for good children. In an unbroken sequence of publications, illustrators have depicted the elfin benefactor “dressed all in fur from his head to his foot” or at the very least wearing a fur-trimmed hat. William Holbrook Beard, an animal painter and sculptor who later depicted Wall Street Bears and Bulls dancing together, seized the Christmas tale and reset it in a rarely depicted urban landscape. Efficiently tossing toys into chimneys, Santa rides in a delicate swan boat drawn by reindeer whose harnesses are decorated with silver bells. The magical event is viewed from a rooftop below skies that are clouded with dense coal smoke. The choking pollution of 19th-century American cities seems only to heighten the theatrical quality of this remarkable illustration, adding a veil of darkness to the mystery of Christmas Eve.

In 1823, an anonymous poem appeared in the Troy Sentinel, a newspaper in industrial upstate New York. It was later credited to Clement Clarke Moore, a New Yorker of distinguished lineage who was a biblical scholar at Columbia College. Clarke acknowledged that he had composed A Visit from Saint Nicholas as a Christmas gift for his children, spinning a tale in which the sober Dutch bishop Saint Nicholas was now “chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf.” More engaging by far was his means of transportation: “a miniature sleigh and eight tiny reindeer.”

From the moment of its publication, the poem became an American favorite, conjuring a Santa Claus who slid down chimneys with a sack full of toys for good children. In an unbroken sequence of publications, illustrators have depicted the elfin benefactor “dressed all in fur from his head to his foot” or at the very least wearing a fur-trimmed hat. William Holbrook Beard, an animal painter and sculptor who later depicted Wall Street Bears and Bulls dancing together, seized the Christmas tale and reset it in a rarely depicted urban landscape. Efficiently tossing toys into chimneys, Santa rides in a delicate swan boat drawn by reindeer whose harnesses are decorated with silver bells. The magical event is viewed from a rooftop below skies that are clouded with dense coal smoke. The choking pollution of 19th-century American cities seems only to heighten the theatrical quality of this remarkable illustration, adding a veil of darkness to the mystery of Christmas Eve.