Walter Hugh Mcdougall Biography

Walter Hugh McDougall was born in Newark, New Jersey, the son of John Alexander McDougall (1810–1894),[3] a painter and close associate of writers such as Edgar Allan Poe and Washington Irving.[4] Walt attended a military academy, and from the age of 16 was self-educated. He began his professional work in 1876 with the New York Daily Graphic, which three years earlier had become the nation's first illustrated daily newspaper. He also sold early works to Harper's Weekly and Puck.[5][6] For a time he was part owner of the Newark newspaper The Suburban.[7] He married F. M. Burns in 1878.[6]

He began working for the New York World in 1884, and a cartoon printed on August 10th of that year became the World's first political cartoon.[8] Several of his cartoons were influential in the 1884 presidential election. One, likening nominee James G. Blaine's dinner with millionaires and plutocrats shortly before the election to Belshazzar's feast of the Bible, is credited with contributing to Blaine's narrow loss to Grover Cleveland. The cartoon, entitled "The Royal Feast of Belshazzar Blaine and the Money Kings" and co-drawn by Valerian Gribayedoff, was reprinted on billboards across New York and Blaine lost the state, and thus the election, by little over 1,000 votes.[9] …show more content…
Frank Baum, as well as his own novel The Hidden City (1891) and story books such as Comic Animals (1890) and The Rambillicus Book (1903). His comic strips included Fatty Felix, Hank the Hermit, Absent-Mined Abner, and Peck's Bad Boy.[5] Another noted political cartoon appeared in Philadelphia's The North American in 1903: when Pennsylvania Governor Samuel W. Pennypacker—long mocked by cartoonists as a parrot—championed a libel bill banning the portrayal of politicians as animals, McDougall caricatured Pennypacker and his supporters as a tree, beer stein, potato, turnip, squash, and chestnut