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Sports have always fascinated Americans. Before the advent of television and all-sport
cable network coverage, to be “in the know” fans had to rely on the images
created by radio broadcasters and the written word of their local newspaper.
Fortunately, fans had one person who could synthesize, inform, and visually illustrate
a game and players for them – the sports cartoonist. During the first two-thirds
of the Twentieth Century most daily newspapers featured a cartoonist who did sport
cartoons on a regular basis. (Many times this person also did other artwork for
his paper, including political cartoons.) In the days of competitive journalism,
a city like New York with its dozen-plus daily newspapers had an equal number of
competing sports cartoonists. It was not unusual to have “yesterday’s
game” or “last night’s boxing match” portrayed with a cartoon
in the morning paper.
In drawings that were the forerunners of today’s “quick read” journalism,
sports cartoonists drew action-packed pieces with a brief storyline summarizing
(and often commenting on) a person, team, or a sport itself. Many sport cartoonists
rendered striking portraits of star athletes as part of their drawings. These originals
not only capture a piece of history, but are incredible works of art.
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Since the 1960s, photojournalism, television coverage of sports, and corporate needs
of newspapers to cut employee costs led to the eventual extinction of full-time
sports cartoonists. But their heyday during the first half of the Twentieth Century
left a rich tradition that is not easily forgotten.
Like magazine illustrators and comic artists, sports cartoonists usually saw their
work as something done for the next issue. Sometimes the subject of the drawing
requested the original art, other times the original would be discarded by the artist
after publication. At that time there was little interest in collecting (or selling)
originals as works of art. The original sports cartoons that remain today are important
not only for nostalgia and historic reasons, but also qualify as fine works of collectible
(and displayable) art.
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The Art-cade Gallery has a broad collection of sport cartoons about important athletes,
games, and trends. Featured cartoonists are Willard Mullin, called the “Rembrandt
of the Sports Page” and “Cartoonist of the Century”, Dick Dugan (Cleveland
“Plain Dealer”), Murray Olderman (cartoonist and sports editor of the
Newspaper Enterprise Association syndicate), Karl Hubenthal (“Los Angeles Times”),
and Burris Jenkins (New York “Journal-American” and Hearst newspaper chain).
All unframed cartoons can be conservation framed for protected display in home,
den, or office.
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