James Guilford Swinnerton (13 November 1875 – 8 September 1974) 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 g ...
and a
landscape painter
Landscape painting, also known as landscape art, is the depiction of natural scenery such as mountains, valleys, trees, rivers, and forests, especially where the main subject is a wide view—with its elements arranged into a coherent composi ...
of the Southwest deserts. He was known as Jimmy to some and Swinny to others. He signed some of his early cartoons Swin, and on one ephemeral comic strip he used Guilford as his signature. Experimenting with narrative continuity, he played a key role in developing the comic strip at the end of the 19th century.
Cartoons
Jimmy Swinnerton's birthplace is a matter of dispute, with one gallery-owner giving
Eureka, California
Eureka (Wiyot: ''Jaroujiji'', Hupa: ''do'-wi-lotl-ding'', Karuk: ''uuth'') is the principal city and county seat of Humboldt County in the Redwood Empire region of California. The city is located on U.S. Route 101 on the shores of Humboldt B ...
,
and another writing,
![Jimmy - His Future Looks Dark (Swinnerton 1912)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8f/Jimmy_-_His_Future_Looks_Dark_%28Swinnerton_1912%29.jpg)
The son of Judge J. W. Swinnerton, Jimmy was 14 when he entered the
San Francisco School of Design, where the painter
Emil Carlsen was one of his instructors.
He was still a teenager when he became a staff cartoonist for
Hearst's ''
San Francisco Examiner
The ''San Francisco Examiner'' is a newspaper distributed in and around San Francisco, California, and published since 1863.
Once self-dubbed the "Monarch of the Dailies" by then-owner William Randolph Hearst, and flagship of the Hearst Corporat ...
'' in 1892. One of his first assignments was to produce for the children's section of the newspaper a weekly cartoon, successively titled ''California Bears'', ''
The Little Bears'' and ''Little Bears and Tykes''. Some comic art historians have called the ''Little Bears'' the first
comic strip
A comic strip is a Comics, sequence of drawings, often cartoons, arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often Serial (literature), serialized, with text in Speech balloon, balloons and Glossary of comics ter ...
, preceding ''
The Yellow Kid
The Yellow Kid (Mickey Dugan) is an American comic strip character that appeared from 1895 to 1898 in Joseph Pulitzer's ''New York World'', and later William Randolph Hearst's ''New York Journal''. Created and drawn by Richard F. Outcault in t ...
'' by three years. This assertion is debatable, depending on the definition of comic strip, but Swinnerton was certainly drawing multi-panel stories with
speech balloons
Speech balloons (also speech bubbles, dialogue balloons, or word balloons) are a graphic convention used most commonly in comic books, comics, and cartoons to allow words (and much less often, pictures) to be understood as representing a charac ...
by 1900.
![The Naughty Adventures of Mr](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6b/The_Naughty_Adventures_of_Mr._Jack_by_James_Swinnerton_cover_%281904%29.jpg)
In 1896, he moved to
New York by invitation to produce comic strips for the ''
Journal-American'', another Hearst paper. He drew a few more ''Little Bears'' for the paper, followed by some strips with a Noah's Ark setting, referred to as ''Mount Ararat''. He hit upon a durable theme with a series of strips featuring anthropomorphic tigers, which soon took the title ''
Mr. Jack''. As the character developed, Mr. Jack was an inveterate philanderer, to his wife's distress. Some of his misdeeds were considered unsuitable for juvenile readers. The strip had its last appearance in the
Sunday comics
The Sunday comics or Sunday strip is the comic strip section carried in most western newspapers, almost always in color. Many newspaper readers called this section the Sunday funnies, the funny papers or simply the funnies.
The first US newspap ...
color supplement in 1904. In a later revival (1912–19), it appeared in the editorial pages. Meanwhile, Swinnerton continued to fill his Sunday space with a new character, a scatterbrained boy named ''Jimmy''. He drew Jimmy in various formats, eventually under the title ''
Little Jimmy'', until 1958 (with a hiatus from 1941 to 1945, during which he wrote and drew the
King Features Syndicate Western strip ''Rocky Mason, Government Marshal'', which premiered on Sunday, August 24, 1941).
[''Rocky Mason, Government Marshal'']
at Don Markstein's Toonopedia
Archived
from the original on February 9, 2017. A peculiarity of Swinnerton's comic strips is that the dialogue appears in quotes within the speech balloons.
Arizona and the desert
About 1906, a doctor told Swinnerton that he was suffering from tuberculosis and had two weeks to live. Determined to defeat the prognosis, Swinnerton was put on a train to Colton, California, by William Randolph Hearst, who considered Swinnerton one of his favorite employees. Swinnerton recovered and stayed there. He alternated between residences in Arizona and California for most of his life. In 1941, he was living at 1261 North Laurel Avenue in Los Angeles.
The spectacular Arizona desert landscape began to influence Swinnerton's artistic output. From 1922 to 1941, he produced a series of picture stories titled ''Canyon Kiddies'' for Hearst's ''
Good Housekeeping
''Good Housekeeping'' is an American women's magazine featuring articles about women's interests, product testing by The Good Housekeeping Institute, recipes, diet, and health, as well as literary articles. It is well known for the "Good Hous ...
''. The ''Canyon Kiddies'' stories usually consisted of several lush color illustrations with captions in verse.
Swinnerton joined the
Bohemian Club, rose through the ranks, and was elected president in 1929.
[ He was also a member of the ]California Art Club
The California Art Club (CAC) is one of the oldest and most active arts organizations in California. Founded in December 1909, it celebrated its centennial in 2009 and into the spring of 2010. The California Art Club originally evolved out of The ...
and the Academy of Western Painters.[ In 1940, he painted 50 backgrounds for ]Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (commonly known as Warner Bros. or abbreviated as WB) is an American film and entertainment studio headquartered at the Warner Bros. Studios complex in Burbank, California, and a subsidiary of Warner Bros. D ...
and Leon Schlesinger Productions
Warner Bros. Cartoons, Inc. was an American animation studio, serving as the in-house animation division of Warner Bros. during the Golden Age of American animation. One of the most successful animation studios in American media history, it was ...
for a Chuck Jones '' Merrie Melodies'' cartoon featuring the Canyon Kiddies, titled '' Mighty Hunters''.
Landscape paintings
Art appraiser and curator Alissa J. Anderson described Swinnerton's work as a painter after he moved to the Southwest:
He painted desert scenes as a fine artist from about 1920 to 1965. In later years he had a studio in the Coachella Valley near Palm Springs
Palm Springs (Cahuilla: ''Séc-he'') is a desert resort city in Riverside County, California, United States, within the Colorado Desert's Coachella Valley. The city covers approximately , making it the largest city in Riverside County by land ...
, and the locally published ''Desert Magazine
''Desert Magazine'' was a monthly regional publication based in the Colorado Desert published between 1937 and 1985. A print version bearing the same name has been revived in the Coachella Valley town of Palm Desert near Palm Springs, California ...
'' expanded his renown. He also maintained a home in Palo Alto
Palo Alto (; Spanish for "tall stick") is a charter city in the northwestern corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a coastal redwood tree known as El Palo Alto.
The city was es ...
, California
California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...
.
Death and legacy
Jimmy Swinnerton died in Palm Springs, California, at the age of 98.
A natural arch in Monument Valley, Arizona, was named "Swinnerton Arch" in his honor.[,]
Archived
from the original on March 10, 2015.
See also
* Carl Eytel
Carl Eytel (September 12, 1862 – September 17, 1925) was a German American artist who built his reputation for paintings and drawings of desert subjects in the American Southwest. Immigrating to the United States in 1885, he settled in Palm Sp ...
* Edmund C. Jaeger
References
Further reading
*
*
External links
*
The Ohio State University Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum: Jimmy Swinnerton
;Audio
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Swinnerton, James
1875 births
1974 deaths
American comic strip cartoonists
American landscape painters
Artists from Palm Springs, California
San Francisco Art Institute alumni
Painters from California
20th-century American painters
American male painters
20th-century American male artists