On Webster’s Wall – The Thrill That Comes Once In A Lifetime

“Take all that stuff off the walls and get rid of it —”

★

T.H. WEBSTER drew this large one-panel cartoon for the New York Tribune daily newspaper of 2 October 1937, in his series The Thrill That Comes Once In A Lifetime, and thought up the joke, captioned ‘The new art editor decides to clean house,’ staged in an editor’s-office with walls filled with original artworks, 17 of the visible drawings are signed and drawn by different American fellow artists. Webster, ‘Webby’ for friends, was 52 at the time. Did Webster enjoy himself composing this wall? Did he personally know these originals? Or the artists? Were there any New York Tribune colleagues among them? The eldest of the 17 shown here was born in 1851, the youngest in 1884. How many of them were not among the living anymore? Who was the eldest? And who was the youngest? Were all these sub-signatures ‘signed’ by Webster himself, you think?

1. DAN SMITH
(1865-1934, Dan Smith)†

The Story of Superstitions
2. A.B. FROST
(1851-1928, Arthur Burdett Frost)†

Our Cat Eats Rat Poison
3. F. Opper
(1857-1937, Frederick Burr Opper)†

Happy Hooligan
4. SWINNERTON
(1875-1974, James Guilford Swinnerton)

Little Jimmy, Little Bears And Tykes
5. Frueh
(1880-1968, Alfred Joseph Frueh)

theatrical caricature
6. HERRIMAN
(1880-1944, George Joseph Herriman)

Krazy Kat
7. ZIM
(1862-1935, Eugene Zimmerman)†

This & That About Caricature
8. Davenport
(1867-1912, Homer Calvin Davenport)†

Cartoons by Homer C. Davenport
9. J.N. DiNg
(1876-1962, Jay Norwood Darling)

Tillie Clapsaddle
10. C.G. BUSH
(1842-1909, Charles Green Bush)†

The Political Cartoon
11. TAD
(1877-1929, Thomas Aloysius Dorgan)†

Tad’s Favorite Indoor Sports
12. McCUTCHEON
(1870-1949, John Tinney McCutcheon)

Bird Center cartoons
13. BRIGGS
(1875-1930, Clare Aloysius Briggs)†

When a Feller Needs a Friend
14. Herbert Johnson
(1878-1946, Herbert Johnson) 
Cartoons by Herbert Johnson

15. T.S. Sullivant
(1854-1926, Thomas Starling Sullivant)†

Fables for the Times
16. Art Young
(1866-1943, Henry Arthur Young)

Journey through Hell
17. F. Fox
(1884-1964, Fontaine Fox)

Toonerville Folks
18. WEBSTER
(1885-1952, Harold Tucker Webster)

The Timid Soul

★

THANKS TO
Rob Stolzer, Brian Walker, Richard Marschall, Ulrich Merkl and Alex Jay 

VAN OPSTAL, 2014

My name is George du Maurier – where do I cut my initials?

 

A du Maurier cut in Punch, August 26, 1865

 by Huib van Opstal

You have a French father and an English mother. You’ve gone through several depressions already. Not least the one following the loss of sight in your left eye in 1858, at twenty-four. Yet, you persist in realizing your dream of drawing and writing for a London weekly called Punch.

Within years you are one of their finest. Late in 1864, with the passing of well-known Punch artist John Leech, you are invited to join the Punch staff, to take Leech’s empty chair at the weekly dinner, and to cut your initials ‘DM’ right beside his signature on the Punch table at number 10, Bouverie Street.

The tall, pretty women you draw in endless repetition attract most attention. You become Punch’s exclusive society reporter in cartoons and illustrations. You write satires and do strips. Most of it in a near realistic style, long before ‘photo journalism’ takes off.

For decades you excel in the tough technique of drawing directly on boxwood, depending on woodcutters who by necessity have to destroy your artwork to realise the finished printed product.

The type of drawing shown above is what you – seemingly carefree – offer the public in the summer of ’65. In a state of bliss, you confidently ‘sign’ it with carved initials too.

Much later E.-V. Lucas muses about George du Maurier:

“…if ever a man worshipped beauty it was he. Not only did he worship it, but he created it. The remark that, by his celebration in Punch of tall and graceful types, du Maurier added 2 inches to the height of English woman has often been made; and, such is the imitative adaptability of women, it is probably true…”