File:SB-04-108-source-1.png

Summary

Description

The Iconoclast and the Cannibal. A three-part comic composition with a visitor in a top hat, a seated islander, birds and a palm, culminating in the islander holding a small figure. All three scenes, poses, costume, birds, palm, frame and hatching match the scrapbook inlay 108.1. The museum pencil label below the printed frame is retained; it is separate from Blavatsky’s handwritten interpretation Theosophy and Spiritualism in the scrapbook.

The same composition is confirmed in G. Washington Æsop's Fables, illustrated by F. S. Church (New York: The World, 35 Park Row, 1878), printed p.45. The book title is dated 1878; the copyright notice 1877. No first-publication or physical-clipping-source claim is made.

Compared directly with H. P. Blavatsky's Scrapbooks, volume4, page108, item7. The museum catalogue title The Whale and the Salamander describes the text-side view; it is not automatically assigned to the different three-part illustration on the other side. The exact media view is identified below.

Source

Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, accession 1938-57-1070-186, exact media CHSDM-57271_01-000001. Credit line: Bequest of Erskine Hewitt. The official record describes printed black ink on paper, date1878, illustrator Frederick Stuart Church, catalogue status Research in Progress. This is a photograph of a printed cutting mounted in an album, not a preparatory drawing.

• Museum object record.
• Persistent object identifier.
• Persistent identifier of this exact media view.
• Complete public image-delivery JPEG used for this crop.
• Larger high-resolution JPEG advertised in the official metadata, 4596 × 5511 pixels; not used for this file.
• Matching Fables, 1878, printed p.45.

Thank you to Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum for preserving this material and freely providing its photographs and Open Access metadata.

File and processing

PNG, 976 × 1661 pixels, RGB. The source actually obtained is the museum's public image-delivery JPEG, 3336 × 4000 pixels, 741182 bytes, SHA-256 cc9369d8f60b9a5e9112ae3779e89c57184f8584f84a6a9c62fe22a217be7bf3. This is the provider's 4000-pixel-long-edge representation, not the larger advertised master. The full photograph's dimensions do not describe the resolution of the small pasted illustration. The complete three-part illustration is preserved without enlargement.

Crop (860, 1035)–(1860, 2720). One bicubic alignment correction of 0.377375 degrees clockwise, based on the printed picture-frame bottom rule. Final trim (12, 12)–(988, 1673); right and bottom bounds are exclusive. No added canvas is included. The complete relevant matrix and frame are preserved. Natural paper colour, marks and printed lines remain. No enlargement, colour or tonal correction, sharpening, retouching or reconstruction was applied. PNG compression is lossless; the source itself is JPEG. The complete source is linked above.

Rights

The saved official Smithsonian Open Access record, captured on 29 October 2026, specifies CC0 for both this exact media view and its metadata. The underlying nineteenth-century printed illustration is public-domain historical material. The attribution, accession and credit line are retained above.