Joseph Keppler (1838–1894) was an Austrian-born American caricaturist, cartoonist, and illustrator who became the most influential political satirist in Gilded Age America, founding the celebrated humor magazine Puck and establishing chromolithographic political caricature as a major force in American public life. Born in Vienna, Keppler trained as an actor and showed early gifts as a draftsman, combining both inclinations in his work for Viennese satirical publications before emigrating to the United States in 1867.

After initial ventures in St. Louis, Keppler moved to New York, where in 1876 he launched the English-language edition of Puck, a humor weekly modeled on European satirical magazines such as the British Punch. The magazine, featuring Keppler's own full-color chromolithographic centerfold caricatures, was an immediate success and quickly became required reading in American political circles. Keppler's caricatures of Gilded Age politicians — robber barons, party bosses, and presidents — deployed a sophisticated visual vocabulary of allegory, classical reference, and biting physical distortion to produce some of the most memorable political imagery of the era. His work targeting the excesses of the Republican Party, railroad monopolists, and political corruption helped shape public opinion during a period of intense social and political controversy.

Keppler's artistic achievement lay in elevating caricature from a crude partisan weapon to a genuinely artistic medium. His command of color lithography, his compositional sophistication, and his ability to deploy complex allegorical imagery placed his best work on a level with the great European satirical illustrators of his century.

The institution he created — Puck — outlasted him by more than two decades and provided a platform that shaped the careers of subsequent generations of American illustrators and political cartoonists. Keppler's legacy is that of the man who made American political satire both artistically ambitious and genuinely powerful.