Howard Pyle in Indiana

On the evening of December 4, 1903, Howard Pyle spoke in front of the Irvington Athenæum, a literary and cultural club formed a few years earlier by members of the faculty at Butler University. It was Pyle's first visit to Indiana, but he would not have come as an unknown to a state then renowned for its native and resident artists, including William Merritt Chase (1849-1916), T.C. Steele (1847-1926), William Forsyth (1854-1935), Richard Buckner Gruelle (1851-1914), Otto Stark (1859-1926), and J. Ottis Adams (1851-1927). Some of these men may even have been in the audience on that December evening of long ago. What they heard may have sounded something like a manifesto, a call to the American artist to draw and paint pictures of his or her own time and place, to distinguish himself by placing his art first before the editor of the popular magazine, then before the vast reading public. This would be an art for the common man, made possible by rapid and radical advances in technology, also by a democratic way of life in which art would be available to all and would reflect the experiences of all. It's no coincidence that Pyle would use in his talk a comparison to the development of the steam engine, for with the invention of the steam engine and the popular, pictorial magazine--and by extension all of the other institutions and innovations of liberal democracy--a new age was upon the earth. (1) And by the turn of the nineteenth century, the United States was the leading nation of that new age. Here, then, is the text of an article telling about Howard Pyle's visit in Indiana, from the Indianapolis News, December 5, 1903, page 7:

HOWARD PYLE SPEAKS ON ART OF THE AGE

NOTED ILLUSTRATOR BEFORE IRVINGTON ATHENAEUM.

THE REALLY AMERICAN ART

  Howard Pyle, the noted author, artist and illustrator, lectured last night before the Athenæum Club, of Irvington, on "The Art of the Age." He was accompanied by his wife, and an informal reception followed the lecture. He was introduced to the audience by H.U. Brown, (2) who referred to his as coming from the State of Delaware, and said that this was Mr. Pyle’s first visit to Indiana.

  Mr. Pyle said: "I must confess that I do come from the effete East, but I hope you will not hold that against me. Many of you here have come from the East, and you may remember that there are glass houses in the West as well as in the East."

  He defined art as representing in imagery and picture that for which the age stands in which that art is created. The pictures of the past that have lived have been those that truly represented the age in which they were produced. They might be faulty in drawing or in color, but they were necessarily true in technique. Botticelli’s pictures, he said, represent the childlike enthusiasm of the people of his day as in a later day the creations Michaelangelo [sic] and those of the great Flemish and Spanish painters represent the enormous robustness of an age that was nearing completion.

"So we," he argued, "should hand down to those who follow us the living imagery of what this age stands for. A work of art is a mental image made possible by means of certain technical methods. Everything created by the hand of man must first exist in his mind.

Must Live in Our Own Age

"We can not live to-day in the nineteenth, the eighteenth or the seventeenth century, nor in any century but our own. That which possesses life and power must arise from a living vital mind; otherwise it can not have life. This age is separated from those that are gone by something radical and vital. In the past men lived in a world of effect. To-day we live in a world of causes. The difference between these is the difference between something and nothing. Let us take the creation of the steam engine, the first conception of a young lad observing the kettle boiling over the fire. He sees the steam raise the lid. How was James Watt different from those who had gone before? Millions had seen that same phenomena [sic] of the kettle. In that one moment of observation Watt had stepped from one age into another. At that moment of observation we passed into a new age, the teeming energy of today. * * *

"Do we keep pace in other forms of art with this marvelous phenomenon brought about by the discovery of the power of steam? Do we paint the living things we see to-day about us? Do we paint the pictures that unite man to man, or do we imitate the painters who have gone, who belong to an age that is past? Have we as Americans fulfilled the possibilities of our art?

"We are the possessors of the greatest glories any nation in the world can call its own. We are the inheritors of all the ages. Does our art represent the age in which we live? I think not. We have the greatest sculptors of the world today. Possibly the greatest portrait painters are Americans. It is likely the landscape artists of this country are the peers of those of any other country, but have we created an art that stands for the age? Have our artists in their studios poured forth upon their canvases the life that belongs to this age? I think not.

Wonderful Possibilities

"I think, instead, there is a vast pottering after effects—an effort to produce effects in reds and greens and blues. Look at the wonderful possibilities that lie within our country to create the greatest pictures that could exist in the world. Is there nothing in all our redundant [sic] life that a man must seek the galleries of Europe and learn his mechanism in the schools of Paris?

"The one American art that exists to-day is the art of the illustrator. The illustrator creates that which is American. He is compelled to do so. He has the severest critic in the world—the editor of the magazine, who must consider that which the million people desire to have pictured for them. If there is a failure to do this the magazine will prove a failure. The magazine artist must represent that which is about him.

"So, in the magazine are to be seen all the phases of American life as they stand nowhere else. And from this is to arise the art that is to be handed down to the future. When we begin to paint pictures that are representatIve of American life, all we ask is your support and encouragement. Then other rewards will come fast enough."

* * *

Now known as the father of illustration in America, Howard Pyle (1853-1911) started his own school of illustration in his native city of Wilmington, Delaware, in 1900. His most famous student was undoubtedly N.C. Wyeth (1882-1945), but others at his Brandywine School included Hoosier illustrators Gayle Porter Hoskins (1887-1962) of Brazil, Herbert Moore (1881-1943) of Indianapolis, and Olive Rush (1866-1973) of Fairmount. Another student, Frank Schoonover (1877-1972), taught at the Herron School of Art in Indianapolis in the late 1920s or early 1930s.

* * *

It is ironic in view of Howard Pyle's words before the Irvington Athenæum that he died and was interred not in the New World but in the Old. He went to Italy in June 1910 for his health and to study the murals in that country. He fell ill and contemplated a return stateside. Instead, Pyle died in Florence on November 9, 1911. A Quaker, he was interred at the Cimitero degli Inglesi, or English Cemetery, a burial ground for Protestants and other non-Roman Catholics. I have been to his grave. It is a simple niche in a columbarium or mausoleum, located towards the rear of the cemetery. The face of the niche, perhaps about the same dimensions as an old-fashioned magazine cover turned sideways, possibly a little larger, is marked only with his name. (I don't think even his dates are on the marker, but I can't be sure. This was several years ago, and we were there at closing hours in late fall, too dark for picture-taking.) If nothing else, the marker on his grave should read: "Father of Illustration in America."

Notes
(1) By Howard Pyle's reference to the invention of the steam engine, I am reminded of Henry Adams' dynamo as a symbol of a changing age, from The Education of Henry Adams (1918).
(2) H.U. Brown was Hilton U. Brown (1859-1958), a graduate of Butler College (later Butler University); reporter, editor, general manager, and vice-president for and of the Indianapolis News; and president of the board of directors of Butler University. When we were kids, our local branch of the Indianapolis Public Library was named for him. I remember seeing his daughter, the author Jean Brown Wagoner (1896-1996), at the Brown Branch, at our school, or maybe somewhere else. My classmate Mary Wagoner is her granddaughter. If I have my geography right, Hilton U. Brown lived across Emerson Avenue from the artist and teacher William Forsyth. I believe his property in Irvington, on the east side of Indianapolis, became part of the grounds of Thomas Carr Howe High School. Now, in our very democratic age, the former site of his grand home is occupied by a gas station.

Images from Howard Pyle and His Hoosier Students

The Mermaid, by Howard Pyle, 1910.

A work by Gayle Porter Hoskins, date unknown.

An illustration by Herbert Moore from The Men Who Founded America (1909).

Finally, two covers for Woman's Home Companion by Olive Rush, the December issues of two successive years, 1908 and 1909.

Original text copyright 2018, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Leo James Beaulaurier (1911-1984)

Painter, illustrator, and muralist Leo James Beaulaurier was born on May 10, 1911, in Great Falls, Montana. We can call him a Hoosier for his three years of study at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana. Beaulaurier also studied at the Art Center School in Los Angeles. He served in the U.S. Army during World War II and worked odd jobs and in construction until 1963, when he began painting full time. Beaulaurier specialized in scenes of the American West and is known for his portraits of American Indians on black velvet. Leo James Beaulaurier died in Great Falls, Montana, on February 11, 1984.

A portrait of Sitting Bull.

Boss Ribs by Beaulaurier.

Finally, a complete tableau of the Great American West.

Text copyright 2016, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Paul McCarthy (1910-1991)

Like Charles Schulz of Peanuts fame, Paul McCarthy was the son of a barber. He was born on January 20, 1910, probably in Crawfordsville, Indiana, and graduated from Crawfordsville High School in 1928. By being born in the right place at the right time, McCarthy fell into the "Sugar Crick School," a group of cartoonists that included Allen Saunders, Bill Holman, Frank Beaven, Dave Gerard, Bandel Linn (a classmate of McCarthy), and, later, Tom Henderson. Nappanee, Indiana, lays claim to having the most cartoonists per capita of any city in the United States. Crawfordsville might give Nappanee a run for its money.

Paul McCarthy began his career as a commercial artist in Louisville, Kentucky, and Danville, Illinois. Moving to Toledo, Ohio, he joined Allen Saunders and Elmer Woggon on the staff of their syndicated comic strip Big Chief Wahoo, later just Chief Wahoo. Though politically incorrect by today’s standards, Chief Wahoo was a popular strip in its day. In order to house a growing staff of assistants and ghosts, Saunders and Woggon "rented a suite of offices in a decrepit building across the street from the [Toledo] News-Bee." (1) Among the junior artists there were Elmer's brother Bill Woggan, later of Katy Keene comic books, and Don Dean, later of the newspaper strip Cranberry Boggs.

Paul McCarthy didn't stay long in Toledo. Nineteen forty found him in New York City, working in the publicity department of Paramount Pictures. He also drew magazine gag cartoons and his own syndicated comic strip. It was called Gertie O’Grady and it made its debut on the same day--June 30, 1940--and in the same venue--the Chicago Tribune Comic Book Magazine--as Dale Messick's Brenda Starr Reporter. The main characters in McCarthy's Sunday strip are plump, Irish Gertie O'Grady, mad genius Professor Bunson Burner, and Apercott, Professor Burner's gorilla. Although it appeared in big-market newspapers such as the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune, Gertie O'Grady was short-lived and came to an end on November 14, 1943.

During World War II, McCarthy drew educational comics and cartoons for the war effort. He continued doing commercial and advertising work after the war. In 1950, McCarthy went to work for Harvey Comics, drawing such features as "Holly of Hollywood," "Fun at the Zoo," and "Sad Sack." He is supposed to have worked at Harvey from 1950 to 1963 as a writer, penciler, and inker. Harvey Comics historian Mark Arnold called his work "pristine," and a look at the two-page story below shows as much. (2) We need cartoonists like Paul McCarthy again.

In 1959, Paul McCarthy lived in Somerville, New Jersey. He is said to have died an untimely death in the early 1960s. However, what happened to Paul Joseph McCarthy remains a mystery. I would like for it no longer to be a mystery, and I hope someone can help put an end to it. His obituary states that Paul McCarthy lived in Milford, New Jersey, for the thirty-five years preceding his death. He may have been the same Paul McCarthy who taught art in elementary school in the area during the 1960s and '70s. In any case, Paul J. McCarthy died on July 11, 1991, at Hunterdon Convalescent Center in Raritan Township. He was eighty-one years old. His wife, Blanche Horton McCarthy, preceded him in death in March of the same year. And so at last we have a solution to the problem of the missing cartoonist. I wish we could have him back.

Notes

(1) "Playwright for Paper Actors: The Autobiography of Allen Saunders, Chapter 9: The Foot in the Door Wore a Moccasin" by Allen Saunders in Nemo: The Classic Comics Library, Oct. 1984, pp. 48-50.

(2) "A Family Affair: The Harvey Comics Story" by Mark Arnold in Comic Book Artist, June 2002, pp. 18-38.

You can read more about Paul McCarthy in Allan Holtz's blog, Stripper's Guide, here.

Gertie O'Grady by Paul McCarthy, 1941. Scan by Allan Holtz.

"Fun at the Zoo" from Harvey Comics, date unknown.

An advertising cartoon by McCarthy from Coronet, August 1951.

Finally, a two-page Sad Sack story showing Paul McCarthy's "pristine" style. Date unknown.

Revised and updated, January 30, 2020. Thanks to James Stout (his comment appears under my article "Allen Saunders and Chief Wahoo," here) for the information that has led me to finding Paul McCarthy's date and place of death.

Corrected on March 30, 2025.
Text and captions copyright 2015, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Roy Anderson Ketcham (1894-1969)

Few artists are as accomplished in fine art as they are in cartooning and illustration. Roy Anderson Ketcham was one who was. Described as "a strapping big blond--a good cross between an Apollo and a college football center," (1) Ketcham studied in Indianapolis, Paris, and Provincetown, won two prizes for his paintings at the Hoosier Salon and other prizes in New York, exhibited among well-known Chicago artists, and taught at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts. He also drew a nationally syndicated comic strip and two comic panels.

Born on November 11, 1894, in Sandborn, Indiana, hardworking Roy Ketcham grew up in Indianapolis, where he attended Shortridge High School and delivered newspapers for the Indianapolis Star. His parents, Lewis (or Louis) M. and Sarah M. Anderson Ketcham, were not well off. If he was going to attend art school, Ketcham would have to earn his own tuition and expenses, so every morning he arose at two o'clock to deliver newspapers on a route just southeast of downtown. "Seems as if I had hundreds of customers," Ketcham recalled, "about three times as many as most of the carriers." (2) Covering his route by bicycle, Ketcham hurried to get his work done before school. By eight o'clock he was in class.

At the same time he was attending Shortridge High School, Ketcham was taking classes at the Herron School of Art under William Forsyth and Clifton Wheeler. He studied at Herron from 1910 to 1913. Among his classmates were Wayman Adams, Minnie Ellsworth Bartlett, Clotilde Embree Funk, Carl C. Graf, Marie Gray, William F. Heitman, Cobb Shinn, and the botanist J.E. Potzger. Another fellow student, Grace Spear, remembered Ketcham as "a popular, likeable [sic] boy. He also was a musician and attended music school along with his art classes. He was a busy lad, also working in his spare moments." (3)

Ketcham's last session at Herron came to an end in June 1913, presumably at about the same time he graduated from high school. A moment of decision seemed upon him, but his uncle came to the rescue by paying for further schooling. In August 1913, eighteen-year-old Roy Ketcham left Indianapolis for New York City, there to embark for France and studies at the Académie Julian under Jean-Paul Laurens (1838-1921). Ketcham was in Paris when war broke out in August 1914. How he returned to the United States is a story known perhaps only to his surviving family members. In 1915 he won the Mrs. Harry Payne Whitney mural prize, presumably in New York. (4) He also won an award from the Art Students League in that city.

Roy Ketcham studied for a season with the portraitist and genre painter Charles Hawthorne (1872-1930) in Provincetown, Massachusetts, and won a prize for his work there. By then, however, exhaustion had set in and the artist began suffering from poor eyesight. Repairing to his father's farm in Loogootee, in Martin County, Indiana, Ketcham spent the next several years in seclusion, pitching hay, working a team of mules, and operating a corn cultivator. "My feeling for painting was gone," he remembered. "It was like being lost."

It wasn't long before Ketcham found himself again. His eyesight improved and he began painting again while on the the farm. Sometime in the early 1920s, he went to Chicago, got a job in a department store, enrolled at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts, and soon opened his own studio. The exhaustion and indecision had passed. "I've never been undecided since," Ketcham recalled in 1937. "It was just a matter of making up my mind, and that hard work on the farm helped do it." (5)

Roy Anderson Ketcham was known as a painter of portraits and still-life, but even a fine artist must eat. In the 1920s, Ketcham put food on the table by working as a cartoonist and illustrator for the Chicago Sun-Times and Junior Homes, The Something-to-Do-Magazine for Mothers and Children. (His work was printed in that magazine in 1927 and 1928.) In early 1927 (perhaps a little before), he began drawing the newspaper comic panel Poor Pa. Written by humorist and newspaper columnist Claude Callan (1881-1956), Poor Pa is a single-panel cartoon on the model of Abe Martin by Kin Hubbard. The art is uncredited and has been attributed to John H. Striebel. A newspaper article from April 1927 gives credit to Ketcham. (6) Very likely both men worked on the feature at various times. Poor Pa ran in syndication from 1926 to soon after Callan's death in 1956.

Roy Ketcham and John H. Striebel (1891-1962) may very well have had a working relationship, for Ketcham worked not only on Poor Pa but also on Aunt Het, a very similar single-panel cartoon in syndication from 1921 to 1967. Striebel, who also drew Dixie Dugan, was the credited artist from the inception of Aunt Het until his death in 1962. Ketcham took over then and drew the feature until it came to an end in early 1967. Aunt Het was written by newspaperman and humorist Robert Quillen from 1921 to his death in 1948, whereupon his widow, Marcelle Babb Quillen, took over the writing. It's worth noting that Roy Ketcham painted portraits of both Poor Pa and Aunt Het, both used in promoting the features. For the past thirty years, Quillen's hometown of Fountain Inn, South Carolina, has put on an Aunt Het fall festival. 

In 1931, Ketcham won the Indianapolis Star prize at the annual Hoosier Salon, held at the Marshall Fields and Company Galleries in Chicago. His entry was a portrait of a young boy, entitled "Bob." The artist repeated that win in 1937 with "The Long Grey Line," a portrait of Arthur Meier, Jr., a Chicago army cadet. Ketcham placed two other child portraits, "Sissie" and "Sailor," in the Hoosier Salon that year. In the previous year, his "Still-Life" was hung in the Fortieth Annual Exhibition by Artists of Chicago and Vicinity at the Art Institute of Chicago.

On October 30, 1939, a new Western comic strip made its debut in American newspapers. Called Bowleg Bill, it was based on a book, Bowleg Bill, The Sea-Going Cowboy, written by Jeremiah Digges and illustrated by William Gropper (1938). (7) Bowleg Bill is a tall tale in the tradition of Paul Bunyan, Pecos Bill, and Captain Stormalong. Its author, Jeremiah Digges, was the credited writer on the comic strip Bowleg Bill. The artist was Roy A. Ketcham, who signed his name simply "Ketcham." In August 1941, Bowleg Bill became Ramblin' Bill. Three months later it was taken over by Marvin P. Bradley, called "Tex" even though he, like Ketcham, was a Midwesterner. (8) By then the strip had put behind it any telling of tall tales. "So modern was the strip," wrote Ron Goulart, "that Bradley never got around to drawing a horse during his tenure." (9)

During his run on Bowleg Bill/Ramblin' Bill, Roy Ketcham taught at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts. Among his students was a young aspiring actress and artist, Barbara Hale. Born in 1922 in DeKalb, Illinois, Barbara graduated from high school in Rockford, Illinois, in 1940 and set off for art school in Chicago in September of that year. Her plan was to become a commercial illustrator and fashion illustrator. That plan changed while she was studying art, for Barbara began modeling for Roy Ketcham for the comic strip Bowleg Bill/Ramblin' Bill. Within a year or two, she was also modeling for newspaper and magazine fashion advertisements. Hollywood scouts took note, and in early 1943, she signed a contract with RKO Radio Pictures. Barbara Hale went on to a successful career in movies and television. She is best known for her part as Della Street on the television show Perry Mason (1957-1966). (10)

According to Allan Holtz's American Newspaper Comics: An Encyclopedic Reference Guide (2012), Roy Ketcham's last episode of Ramblin' Bill was printed in November 1941. The strip came to an end on August 28, 1943, when "Tex" Bradley sent him off to war. Ketcham continued drawing comics, presumably Poor Pa, Aunt Het, and possibly others. (He had also created illustrations for The Child's Story of Science by Ramon Peyton Coffman, better known as Uncle Ray [1939].) Ketcham lived in Blue Island, Illinois, for many years, then Portage, Michigan, and finally Schoolcraft, Michigan. Roy Anderson Ketcham died in Schoolcraft on November 10, 1969. He was a day short of his seventy-fifth birthday.

Bowleg Bill/Ramblin' Bill by Roy Anderson Ketcham, dated October 25, year unknown, and because the year is unknown, the correct title is unknown. (Bowleg Bill became Ramblin' Bill on August 4, 1941.) If this strip is from 1940 or 1941, Barbara Hale may have been a model for one or both female characters. As you can see, Bill was a modern-day character, at least in the later run of the strip. Image courtesy of Giancarlo Malagutti.

Ramblin' Bill by Marvin P. "Tex" Bradley, dated August 28, 1943, and the last episode of a strip begun by Ketcham.

Caricatures of members of the Chicago Palette and Chisel Club, drawn by Paul Plaschke, date unknown. Big, blond Roy Ketcham is number 18, in the lower center of the picture and smoking a pipe. Plaschke, Ketcham, Bradley, Hubbard, Striebel, and Uncle Ray all had Indiana connections, for all were either born, educated, lived, and/or worked in the Hoosier State.

I would like to say a special thanks to the Italian cartoonist and comics historian Giancarlo Malagutti, who led me to find out more about Roy Anderson Ketcham and who generously provided the first comic strip image shown above. Signor Malagutti's website is called Mathias, and you can reach it by clicking:

http://www.mathias.is.it/mathias/h_o_m_e.html

Thanks also to Carolyn, clerk at the Schoolcraft Community Library in Schoolcraft, Michigan, for Ketcham's obituary.

This article is an update to my original posting on Roy Anderson Ketcham, dated July 15, 2012.

Notes

(1) "Roy Ketcham, Former Star Carrier, Twice Winner of Its Salon Prize," Indianapolis Star, Mar. 7, 1937, part 5, p. 3.

(2) Quoted in ditto.

(3) Quoted in "1937 Hoosier Salon Portraiture Winner Studied at John Herron," Indianapolis News, Feb. 18, 1937, part 2, p. 1.

(4) Mrs. Harry Payne Whitney was Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875-1942), daughter of Cornelius Vanderbilt II, heiress to his fortune, patron (or matron) of the arts, and founder of the Whitney Museum of American Art. 

(5) Quoted in "1937 Hoosier Salon Portraiture Winner Studied at John Herron."

(6) "Poor Pa, Himself!" Sandusky Register (Michigan), Apr. 17, 1927: 3.

(7) Jeremiah Digges was the pen name of journalist, author, editor, speechwriter, and television scenarist Josef (or Joseph) Isadore Berger (1903-1971).

(8) Like Ketcham, Marvin P. Bradley (1913-1986) studied at the Herron School of Art in Indianapolis. He went on to draw Rex Morgan, M.D., among other comic strips.

(9) The Funnies: 100 Years of American Comic Strips by Ron Goulart (1995), pp. 156-157.

(10) In one episode, "The Case of the Absent Artist," Perry Mason clears a cartoonist, played by Wynne Pearce, of murder. In coming full circle, I should note that Barbara Hale's son, William Katt, played television's Greatest American Hero and has written for the comic book version of the show. His character's name in The Greatest American Hero (1981-1983) is Ralph Hinckley, Jr., changed to Hanley after the attempt on Ronald Reagan's life in 1981. As children, we in the Hanley family were thrilled to have a television character--a superhero, even!--with our name.

Text and captions copyright 2014, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Cassilly Adams (1843-1921)

This month marks the 136th anniversary of the Battle of Little Bighorn, or as the victors called it, the Battle of the Greasy Grass. On June 25, 1876, a sizable force of American Indians camped near the Little Bighorn River in eastern Montana met and crushed the United States Seventh Cavalry under George Armstrong Custer, killing him and 267 of his officers, men, and scouts. The popular image of the battle at Little Bighorn comes from a lithograph made by the German-American artist F. Otto Becker (1854-1945) and mass produced in 1896 by the Anheuser-Busch Company of St. Louis, Missouri. Becker's image, entitled "Custer's Last Fight," is justifiably famous. Lost and almost forgotten today is the work that preceded and inspired it. Also called "Custer's Last Fight," it was painted by Cassilly Adams, an Ohio artist laid to rest in an Indiana cemetery.

Cassilly Adams was born on July 18, 1843, in Zanesville, Ohio. His father was a Massachusetts-born lawyer, descended from President John Adams. As a young man, Cassilly Adams served in the United States Navy during the Civil War, first as a Master's Mate, then as an Acting Ensign in the Mississippi Squadron, aboard the U.S.S. Osage. He studied at the Boston Academy of Art and the Cincinnati Art School and made his living as a landscape artist, designer, and engraver. By 1880, Adams was living in St. Louis. In 1884-1885, he painted a monumental canvas--16 1/2 feet by 9 1/2 feet--depicting the Battle of Little Bighorn. (There were also two end panels depicting Custer as a small boy and in death.) The idea was for the painting to be a traveling exhibition and subject of a lecture for paying customers. That venture fell through, and the painting went to a St. Louis saloonkeeper, and, upon his death, to the Anheuser-Busch Company. Otto Becker was brought in to turn Adams' painting into a popular lithograph. In his book One for a Man, Two for a Horse, author Gerald Carson called Adams' work "the most popular exemplar of American saloon art." It was also used to sell patent medicine. Unfortunately, Cassilly Adams' original painting, "Custer's Last Fight," is no longer with us. Anheuser-Busch presented it to the Seventh Cavalry, which proceeded to lose it despite its immense size. The painting was rediscovered, lost again, found again, restored during the Great Depression, and finally put on display at the officer's club at Fort Bliss, Texas. On June 13, 1946, almost seventy years to the day after the Battle of Little Bighorn, the painting was destroyed by fire.

Little is known otherwise of Cassilly Adams. He worked in Cincinnati and Toledo as a designer and engraver and painted numerous scenes of Indian life. The 1920 census found him in Marion County, Indiana. At age seventy-seven, he was occupied as a farmer. He died the following year, on May 8, 1921, in Traders Point and--like Custer and his men--sought the high ground, for Cassilly Adams now lies buried at Crown Hill Cemetery, located at the highest point in Indianapolis.

An adaptation of Cassilly Adams' painting "Custer's Last Fight," here used to advertise M.A. Simmons Liver Medicine. The original painting is now lost. Images of it can be hard to find. 

Instead we have Otto Becker's lithograph, also adapted from Adams' original painting. This image, from 1896, is often attributed to Adams. Robert Taft discussed images of the battle in the pages of the Kansas Historical Quarterly in November 1946 (Vol. 14, No. 4) and in his book, Artists and Illustrators of the Old West: 1850-1900 (1953). You can read Taft's article and see other images on the website of the Kansas State Historical Society, here.

Three images of Indian life by Cassilly Adams.

Postscript (July 15, 2012): "Custer's Last Fight" by Cassilly Adams, an image from Dr. Robert Taft's Artists and Illustrators of the Old West: 1850-1900 (1953). This version is from a restoration made in 1938. I wonder if there is an extant image of the original painting or of its two flanking panels.

Postscript (Feb. 5, 2015): Author Myron J. Smith, Jr., has cited this article in his new book, Civil War Biographies from the Western Waters: 956 Confederate and Union Naval and Military Personnel, Contractors, Politicians, Officials, Steamboat Pilots, and Others (Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company, 2015). Mr. Smith has given an interesting account of Cassilly Adams' military career during the Civil War. You can see a preview of Mr. Smith's book on Google Books.

Text and captions copyright 2012, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Arthur Sinclair Covey (1877-1960)

Arthur Sinclair Covey was born on June 13, 1877, in Leroy, Illinois, and was reared in Missouri and in El Dorado, Kansas. In 1893, Covey "made the run" with the opening of the Cherokee Strip in Oklahoma. He followed up a year at Southwestern College in Winfield, Kansas, with art studies in Chicago, Paris, and Munich between 1897 and 1908.

Living in Indianapolis at the turn of the century, Covey drew pictures for the Indianapolis Press before moving on to the Cleveland Plain Dealer in 1901. He provided illustrations for magazines, including a series of covers for The American Magazine, during the early part of the century, but he found his life's work in painting murals. His first individual commission was for the Wichita Public Library in 1914. Perhaps his best known series is at the Kohler Company offices in Kohler, Wisconsin. That series, completed in 1921-1922, is the subject of a fine article in the Wisconsin Magazine of History, Winter 2009-2010.

Covey married artists in succession. His first wife, Mary Dorothea Sale (d. 1917), was a British citizen and a student of Frank Brangwyn in London, as Covey himself was between 1905 and 1908. In 1921, Covey married Lois Lenski (1893-1974), a children's book author and illustrator famous for her Mr. Small series. In 1928, the couple bought an eighteenth-century house in Harwinton, Connecticut. Called "Greenacres," it would be their home for the rest of Arthur S. Covey's life. One of his last major works was the ceiling of the Trinity Lutheran Church in Worcester, Massachusetts, executed in 1951 when he was seventy-four years old. Covey died nearly a decade later, on February 5, 1960.

"The Run," a lithograph by Arthur Sinclair Covey showing the run on the Cherokee Strip in Oklahoma, 1893, in which the artist took part.

"Work," an etching by Covey which appeared in the Sunday Magazine of the Sunday Star, Washington, D.C., August 31, 1913.

A drawing by Covey on the subject of work. It may be a study for a mural, but I don't know the date of the drawing.

Covey's second wife was author and illustrator Lois Lenski. Every child who grew up between the 1930s and the 1970s remembers her Mr. Small series, of which there were ten titles. Policeman Small (1962) was the last.

Text and captions copyright 2011, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Sanford Tousey (1883-1961)

Thomas Sanford Tousey was born on May 28, 1883, into the wild and wooly West, into a world full of cowboys and Indians, horses and horsemen, and gents who sported big whiskers and carried pistols in their hip pockets. Growing up on a thoroughbred ranch in east Kansas must have been exciting for the future artist, but when Tousey was just eight years old, his family gave up life in the West and moved to Indiana. Throughout his childhood, Tousey returned to his great-grandfather’s ranch near the Potawatami Indian Reservation, to relive the Western way of life he had left behind. He later recounted his experiences in his first children’s book, Cowboy Tommy (1932).

Sanford Tousey (as he came to call himself) graduated from high school in Anderson, Indiana, in 1902.  For two years prior, he had earned seven dollars and fifty cents per week drawing daily chalk-plate cartoons for the Anderson Morning Herald. Most of that income went towards schooling at the Art Institute of Chicago under J.C. Leyendecker (1874-1951) and Frederic William Goudy (1865-1941). After that, Tousey went further east, to Wilmington, Delaware, for studies under Howard Pyle (1853-1911), and to the Art Students League in New York. He finished art school in Paris and before long settled into a career as a freelance illustrator and cartoonist in New York. For the next twenty years or so, he made sales to leading popular magazines, including Ballyhoo, Collier’s, Harper’s, Judge, Liberty, Life, Puck, The Saturday Evening Post, and Scribner’s.

During the early 1930s, Tousey gave up freelancing and turned to writing and illustrating children’s books. Over forty titles followed the publication of Cowboy Tommy in 1932, most involving cowboys, Indians, horses, and the Old West. Tousey became one of the bestselling children’s book authors of his day. In addition to authoring and illustrating a series of biographies of famed westerners such as Kit Carson, Buffalo Bill, and Jim Bridger, Tousey illustrated books by others, including Boy on Horseback (1935) by Lincoln Steffens.

Tousey retired in the mid-1950s and died on June 28, 1961, at his home in Monroe, New York. His papers are at the University of Kansas.

Books by Sanford Tousey and Illustrated by Sanford Tousey

Cowboy Tommy: The Story of a Boy's Adventures on a Ranch (1932)

Cowboy Tommy's Roundup (1934)

Boy on Horseback by Lincoln Steffens (1935)

Cowboy Jimmy (1935)

Steamboat Billy (1935)

On the Golden Trail (1936)

Chinky, the Banker Pony (1937)

Jerry and the Pony Express (1937)

Whistling Bill by Florence Romaine (1937)

Chinky Joins the Circus (1938)

Daniel Boone (1939)

The Shining Mountains by Lulita Crawford Pritchett (1939)

Indians of the Plains (1940)

Stagecoach Sam (1940)

Bob and the Railroad (1941)

Ned and the Rustlers (1941, 1945)

The Northwest Mounted Police (1941)

Val Rides the Oregon Trail (1941)

Airplane Andy (1942)
Cowboys of America (1942)

Old Blue, the Cow Pony (1942, 1945)

Pack Jack Trail by Addison Talbott (1942)

Dick and the Canal Boat (1943)

Little Bear's Pinto Pony (1943)

Fred and Brown Beaver Ride the River (1944)

Trouble in the Gulch (1944)

Lumberjack Bill (1946)

Tinker Tim (1946)

Treasure Cave (1946)

Bill and the Circus (1947)

Jack Finds Gold (1947)

Davy Crockett, Hero of the Alamo (1948)

Indians and Cowboys (1948)

Kit Carson, American Scout (1949)

Toby Has a Dog by May Justus (1949)

Horseman Hal (1950)

A Pony for the Boys (1950)

Bill Clark, American Explorer (1951)

The Twin Calves (1951)

White Prince, the Arabian Horse (1951)

Cub Scout (1952)

Jim Bridger, American Frontiersman (1952)

Wild Bill Hickok, Frontier Marshal (1952)

John C. Fremont, Western Pathfinder (date unknown)

In his middle age, Tousey returned to the world of his youth, away from high society and automobiles and to the Old West. Cowboy Tommy (1932) was his first book for children. Cowboy Jimmy (1935), shown here, followed close on its heels. More than three dozen books on cowboys, horses, Indians, and explorers followed over the next two decades. If Tousey is remembered today, it is for his books for children.

Before The New Yorker came along in the 1920s, magazine cartoons typically looked like this drawing by Sanford Tousey, from Judge, circa 1910. Take away the caption (and the fanciful element) and this cartoon could be an illustration for a short story.

Puck, Judge, and Life--the three great humor magazines of the time--were published in New York for a big-city, East-Coast crowd. Class and money were frequent topics of the cartoons and illustrations they published. So was new technology. Sanford Tousey specialized in depicting the automobile and the comic aspects of early motoring, as in this cartoon, also from Judge, also from about 1910.

Revision (March 31, 2021): A photograph of Sanford Tousey, the first I have ever seen. This is from Judge, August 25, 1917. Thanks to Alex Jay for providing the link.

Revised and updated on July 25, 2020.

Text copyright 2010, 2024 Terence E. Hanley