Gardner Rea (1894 – December 29, 1966) was an American
cartoonist
A cartoonist is a visual artist who specializes in both drawing and writing cartoons (individual images) or comics (sequential images). Cartoonists differ from comics writers or comic book illustrators in that they produce both the literary and ...
, and one of the original contributing artists to ''
The New Yorker
''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...
''.
Of Rea, one commentator has written: “He was bawdy without being obscene, absurd without being obscure. His captioned and uncaptioned gags were pithy and true.”
A native of
Ironton, Ohio, Rea was born into an artistic family and planned to become a painter. When he was fifteen years old, he sold a gag cartoon to ''
Life
Life is a quality that distinguishes matter that has biological processes, such as signaling and self-sustaining processes, from that which does not, and is defined by the capacity for growth, reaction to stimuli, metabolism, energ ...
'' magazine.
He attended
East High School in
Columbus, Ohio
Columbus () is the state capital and the most populous city in the U.S. state of Ohio. With a 2020 census population of 905,748, it is the 14th-most populous city in the U.S., the second-most populous city in the Midwest, after Chicago, and t ...
and
Ohio State University
The Ohio State University, commonly called Ohio State or OSU, is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio. A member of the University System of Ohio, it has been ranked by major institutional rankings among the best publ ...
, where he met and befriended
James Thurber.
Rea played tennis in college and was the editor of the humor magazine,
the ''Sundial'',
which he had helped to found.
From 1914, he worked as a freelance writer and artist in
Manhattan
Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...
, and contributed to ''Life'' and ''
Judge
A judge is a person who presides over court proceedings, either alone or as a part of a panel of judges. A judge hears all the witnesses and any other evidence presented by the barristers or solicitors of the case, assesses the credibility an ...
'' magazines.
During
World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
, he served in the
Chemical Warfare Service
The Chemical Corps is the branch of the United States Army tasked with defending against chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN) weapons. The Chemical Warfare Service was established on 28 June 1918, combining activities that until ...
.
He began contributing not only drawings and covers but also gags to ''The New Yorker'' after it was founded in 1925.
Artists such as
Charles Addams
Charles Samuel Addams (January 7, 1912 – September 29, 1988) was an American cartoonist known for his darkly humorous and macabre characters, signing the cartoons as Chas Addams. Some of his recurring characters became known as the Addams Fa ...
and
Helen Hokinson
Helen Elna Hokinson (June 29, 1893 – November 1, 1949) was an American cartoonist and a staff cartoonist for ''The New Yorker''. Over a 20-year span, she contributed 68 covers and more than 1,800 cartoons to ''The New Yorker''.
Life and ...
drew cartoons based on gags written by Rea.
Gardner Rea in the mid 1930s was a regular contributor to the Communist Party's literary magazine "New Masses," with work appearing in nearly every weekly issues in the years 1936 and 1937.
References
External links
Gardner Rea cartoons at the New Yorker's Cartoon Bank
The New Yorker cartoonists
American cartoonists
Esquire (magazine) people
1894 births
1966 deaths
{{US-cartoonist-stub