Prime Bear Sandwich - Not Really

The Bear Dance

In a restaurant near our home - Adam's Rib East in Eastport - we noticed tonight for the first time a print of a painting by William Holbrook Beard. Beard was born in Painesville, Ohio, and studied abroad. In 1861, he moved to New York City. His humorous treatment of bears, cats, dogs, horses and monkeys, generally with some human occupation and expression, and usually satirical, gave him a great vogue at one time, and his pictures were

The Primer Sandwich

largely reproduced. The print on the wall above booth near the table where we ate showed a large gathering of bears in the woods, many dancing together and carrying on much like people would do at a party. I was able to quickly look up the painting on my Blackberry, but Jan wouldn't let me take a shot of the print above the booth, even though the folks sitting there had paid their bill and left right before us. I could have pretended that the half-inch-thick slab of medium cooked prime rib on my sandwich was bear rather than beef, but who would want to do that that when the beasts are anthropomorphized so well in the scene captured by the bear-loving Beard.