C. Bunnell

C. Bunnell was an American illustrator active during the late nineteenth century, working primarily for Harper’s Weekly during the 1880s, when the illustrated press was the dominant medium for visual news. His drawings appeared in several major issues of the magazine in 1886, including depictions of the Haymarket Affair in Chicago and the wedding of President Grover Cleveland to Frances Folsom at the White House. These works, rendered from firsthand sketches and translated by engravers into printed form, reveal a confident eye for human drama and composition, traits that allowed his images to stand out amid the intense visual competition of the era’s news weeklies.

Like many of his contemporaries, Bunnell’s name rarely appeared beyond his published signatures, and few details of his life are known today. His surviving illustrations, however, place him among the cadre of “special artists” who served as the eyes of the nation before photography could fill that role. Through his drawings for Harper’s Weekly, C. Bunnell helped document defining moments of American social and political life in the post Civil War generation, leaving behind a small but distinctive record of the artist-reporter’s craft.