Joseph Jacinto Mora, 1862-1947
Joseph Jacinto Mora was an illustrator, photographer, writer, and sculptor, born in Montevideo, Uruguay. His family moved to the United States when he was a year old. He studied at the Art Students League in New York and at the Cowles Art School in Boston, and worked for several years as a staff artist and cartoonist at the Boston Herald. Later, he moved to the Southwest, where he traveled, sketched and wrote about life in the southwestern states and Mexico. In Arizona and New Mexico, he spent time living with the Hopi and Navajo. He photographed and illustrated their ceremonies until photography was banned from them. He married and settled down in California, continuing to work as an illustrator and writer. He also completed several sculptural commissions, the best known of which is located at the Mission San Carlos Borromeo Del Rio Carmelo.
Mora wrote and illustrated the cartoon Animaldom in 1907 for the Boston Herald/W. E. Haskell syndicate. Like many other newspaper cartoons of the late 1890s and early 1900s, Animaldom was not restricted to a typical series of picture grids. Rather, Mora spread his images across the page, intermixing them with text. Below are links to six examples of his beautifully drawn and cleverly written cartoon.
