Art Art &Bill Peckmann &Books &Comic Art &Daily post 18 Feb 2011 08:06 am
Feininger – 5 Wee Willie Winkie
Up stairs and down stairs in his night-gown,
Tapping at the window, crying at the lock,
Are the children in their bed, for it’s past ten o’clock?
.
- I don’t suspect that Lyonel Feininger took anything more than the title from this famous, old Scottish poem. Nor do I suspect that the Shirley Temple/John Ford feature, Wee Willie Winkie, owes anything to Feininger.
However, it stands that this is the second comic strip the cartoonist/artist inaugurated in 1906. That was also the last year he worked on a strip, choosing to remain an artist/painter for the remainder of his life. I’ve already posted a piece on Feininger’s first strip, The Kin-Der-Kids, in the past month. I’ve also posted three pieces on Feininger’s artwork (1, 2, 3).
These have all been loaned to me courtesy of Bill Peckmann‘s gracious kindness and his amazing archive of artwork. Many thanks to him.
Here are strips of Wee Willie Winkie’s World straight from this book edited and introduced by Bill Blackbeard.
The original book cover.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
We’ve already seen Feininger’s love of trains in some of his watercolors.
8
I think a trolley also doubles as a train.
9
Suddenly a format change.
10
Another format change.
on 18 Feb 2011 at 5:09 pm 1.Eddie Fitzgerald said …
What a treat! Thanks a million! It’s possible that Feininger was the very best comic strip artist ever, and if he wasn’t, he was certainly among the best. If newspapers still contained strips like this I’d buy them faithfully, and I’ll bet a lot of other people would too.
on 18 Feb 2011 at 10:40 pm 2.Eric Noble said …
Absolutely fantastic!!! I wish I could find this book. If I had the money, I would buy it in a heartbeat!!! These are the kind of things that affirm my love for cartoons.
on 19 Feb 2011 at 12:55 pm 3.Oscar Solis said …
This is some of the most beautiful comic strip work I’ve ever seen. Thanks for posting this (and pretty much everything you post). A visit to your blog is always a education.
on 26 Feb 2011 at 2:18 am 4.Robert Schaad said …
These are beautiful. I’m not sure what the original (printed) dimensions were for these, but I’d like to see them get the same large format (Sunday press) treatment as Nemo, Oz and Krazy Kat.