Thanksgiving Day, 1860—The Two Great Classes of Society

This multi-panel illustration by Winslow Homer uses sequential frames to contrast wealth and poverty on Thanksgiving. Upper panels show genteel domestic scenes—women at their toilette, refined leisure—captioned "Those who have more dinners than appetite." Lower panels depict working families in cramped quarters, preparing meager meals, labeled "Those who have more appetite than dinners." The central heading frames the social commentary as "The Two Great Classes of Society." The work exemplifies how 19th-century newspaper illustration employed panel arrangement and captioning to construct visual narratives, establishing conventions that would define the emerging language of sequential art and the Sunday supplement comics that followed.