A Biography of Artist Winsor McCay
The
creator of "Little Nemo in Slumberland" was a comics and cartoon
innovator who influenced generations of artists who came after him.
“Winsor
McCay was the first original genius of the comic strip medium,” wrote
Robert C. Harvey. “Ditto for the medium of animated cartoons. No
question. He did things in both media that no one had done before. He
was so far ahead of his time that many of his innovations were beyond
the abilities of his contemporaries.”
Winsor Zenic McCay was born on September 26, 1867, ’69, or ’71, in Spring Lake, Michigan, to Robert and Janet Murray McKay (later McCay). As a child, he drew obsessively. “I drew for my own pleasure,” he later wrote. “I drew on walls, the school blackboard, old bits of paper, the walls of barns.”
Early Career
As a young man in Chicago and Cincinnati, McCay designed circus advertisements and museum posters and even street decorations. By the end of the 19th century, he was illustrating news stories for the Times Star and drawing cartoons for the Commercial Gazette and the Enquirer, the latter of which he eventually became art director. He also drew cartoons for magazines like the old Life, and they caught the eye of New York Herald publisher James Gordon Bennett, who offered McCay a job in late 1903. McCay started as a staff illustrator on the Evening Telegram and worked his way up to doing comic strips for the Herald.
On July 24, 1904, McCay began a series of strips called “Little Sammy Sneeze.” The concept was simple: every week, Sammy sneezed. The funny part (or horrific, depending on your perspective) was that his sneeze always wrecked the immediate vicinity, as if the scenery was all a set for the strip. On September 10 of the same year, using the pseudonym “Silas,” McCay began “Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend” for the Evening Telegram. In each installment, the protagonist (different each week) had a nightmare brought on by eating Welsh rarebit before bed.
Little Nemo
Then came what some consider “the supreme all-time masterpiece of the comic strip considered as graphic art.” On October 15, 1905, “Little Nemo in Slumberland” began in the Sunday Herald. The basic plot was the same every Sunday: each night, Little Nemo was carried in dream to Slumberland, where the young boy had fantastic adventures that ended, every week, with his startled awakening safe in his own bed.
McCay varied the shape and size of his panels to fit the demands of his story, unusual for the time. He was a master of architectural rendering. He annotated his artwork with precise instructions to the engraver about which colors to use. “Only one thing blemishes McCay’s execution of his vision,” wrote Robert C. Harvey. “It is odd that an artist with his exquisite sense of design should draw such ugly speech balloons.”
Vaudeville and Animation
The extreme popularity of “Rarebit” and “Nemo” led McCay to further activities. In June 1906, he toured major cities east of the Mississippi on a vaudeville circuit doing 20-minute acts of chalk talks and lightning sketches daily. The idea was to entertain the audience with drawings and a line of patter. At the same time, he continued to draw his various newspaper strips in his hotel rooms.
By 1909, McCay was at work on animated cartoons. He later claimed his son Robert sparked his thinking about animation by showing him a “flip book,” a little pad of paper on whose pages a succession of drawings shows a figure engaged in some activity; when the pages are flipped, the figure appears to move. Between 1910 and 1917, he drew a number of humorous films. On April 8, 1911, around the same time that he left Bennett for William Randolph Hearst’s organization to produce mainly editorial cartoons, a “Little Nemo” film was released on. On February 22, 1914, McCay debuted the two-years-in-production Gertie the Dinosaur, the first widely popular animated cartoon in history. In 1918, he drew The Sinking of the Lusitania. His last animation was 1920’s The Flying House.
Forced by Hearst to give up the animation and vaudeville gigs, McCay settled into editorial cartoons and advertising art in the 20s and 30s. He died on July 26, 1934, leaving behind him a body of work that few have been able to match or even approach.
References:
Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend, by Winsor McCay, Dover Publications, New York, 1993
The Art of the Funnies, by Robert C. Harvey, University Press of Mississippi, 1994
A History of the Comic Strip, by Pierre Couperie and Maurice C. Horn, Crown Publishers, New York, 1968
The Comics, by Brian Walker, Abrams, New York, 2002
Winsor Zenic McCay was born on September 26, 1867, ’69, or ’71, in Spring Lake, Michigan, to Robert and Janet Murray McKay (later McCay). As a child, he drew obsessively. “I drew for my own pleasure,” he later wrote. “I drew on walls, the school blackboard, old bits of paper, the walls of barns.”
Early Career
As a young man in Chicago and Cincinnati, McCay designed circus advertisements and museum posters and even street decorations. By the end of the 19th century, he was illustrating news stories for the Times Star and drawing cartoons for the Commercial Gazette and the Enquirer, the latter of which he eventually became art director. He also drew cartoons for magazines like the old Life, and they caught the eye of New York Herald publisher James Gordon Bennett, who offered McCay a job in late 1903. McCay started as a staff illustrator on the Evening Telegram and worked his way up to doing comic strips for the Herald.
On July 24, 1904, McCay began a series of strips called “Little Sammy Sneeze.” The concept was simple: every week, Sammy sneezed. The funny part (or horrific, depending on your perspective) was that his sneeze always wrecked the immediate vicinity, as if the scenery was all a set for the strip. On September 10 of the same year, using the pseudonym “Silas,” McCay began “Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend” for the Evening Telegram. In each installment, the protagonist (different each week) had a nightmare brought on by eating Welsh rarebit before bed.
Little Nemo
Then came what some consider “the supreme all-time masterpiece of the comic strip considered as graphic art.” On October 15, 1905, “Little Nemo in Slumberland” began in the Sunday Herald. The basic plot was the same every Sunday: each night, Little Nemo was carried in dream to Slumberland, where the young boy had fantastic adventures that ended, every week, with his startled awakening safe in his own bed.
McCay varied the shape and size of his panels to fit the demands of his story, unusual for the time. He was a master of architectural rendering. He annotated his artwork with precise instructions to the engraver about which colors to use. “Only one thing blemishes McCay’s execution of his vision,” wrote Robert C. Harvey. “It is odd that an artist with his exquisite sense of design should draw such ugly speech balloons.”
Vaudeville and Animation
The extreme popularity of “Rarebit” and “Nemo” led McCay to further activities. In June 1906, he toured major cities east of the Mississippi on a vaudeville circuit doing 20-minute acts of chalk talks and lightning sketches daily. The idea was to entertain the audience with drawings and a line of patter. At the same time, he continued to draw his various newspaper strips in his hotel rooms.
By 1909, McCay was at work on animated cartoons. He later claimed his son Robert sparked his thinking about animation by showing him a “flip book,” a little pad of paper on whose pages a succession of drawings shows a figure engaged in some activity; when the pages are flipped, the figure appears to move. Between 1910 and 1917, he drew a number of humorous films. On April 8, 1911, around the same time that he left Bennett for William Randolph Hearst’s organization to produce mainly editorial cartoons, a “Little Nemo” film was released on. On February 22, 1914, McCay debuted the two-years-in-production Gertie the Dinosaur, the first widely popular animated cartoon in history. In 1918, he drew The Sinking of the Lusitania. His last animation was 1920’s The Flying House.
Forced by Hearst to give up the animation and vaudeville gigs, McCay settled into editorial cartoons and advertising art in the 20s and 30s. He died on July 26, 1934, leaving behind him a body of work that few have been able to match or even approach.
References:
Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend, by Winsor McCay, Dover Publications, New York, 1993
The Art of the Funnies, by Robert C. Harvey, University Press of Mississippi, 1994
A History of the Comic Strip, by Pierre Couperie and Maurice C. Horn, Crown Publishers, New York, 1968
The Comics, by Brian Walker, Abrams, New York, 2002
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