Jimmy Swinnerton, 1875-1974
Jimmy Swinnerton was born in Eureka, California. He enrolled in art school at 14, and began working as a staff artist at William Randolph Hearst’s San Francisco Examiner in 1892. He moved to New York in 1898, working at Hearst’s New York Journal, where he began drawing comic strips as well as spot illustrations and sports cartoons. In addition to the regular comic features Mr. Jack, Little Jimmy, and Canyon Kids, he drew numerous one-shots for the Hearst Sunday comic sections. The eleven examples presented here show Swinnerton’s talent for playful caricature and his humorous outlook on late nineteenth and early twentieth century life.
