Merry Christmas (Yuletide Revels)

Full of humorous vignettes, this work presents William Glackens at the height of his powers as a draftsman and storyteller. In a large room decorated for Christmas, throngs of children play with their new toys—often with painful consequences—while a few adults make futile attempts to control the chaos. Glackens’s figure style is slightly cartoonish but incorporates descriptive details that endow each child with a distinct personality. Reproduced in Collier’s Weekly, one of the nation’s most popular magazines of the period, this image comments ironically on the innocence of children and the joys of the holiday season.