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Ad Code: 3
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from Auction House Records.
Somebody is always taking the joy out of life....
Artwork images are copyright of the artist or assignee
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This biography from the Archives of AskART:
|  Clare Briggs was a cartoonist whose abundant body of work provides a social history of his time. He created a memorable panorama of middle-class, middlebrow, and Middle America at the turn of the century.
Born in Reedsburg, Wisconsin, Briggs, lived in a succession of small midwestern towns before his family settled in Lincoln, Nebraska, where the artist went to college. His first regular job was as a newspaper sketch artist in St. Louis, and during the Spanish American War, he worked for that citys Chronicle as an editorial cartoonist. His efforts to find a job in New York City were unsuccessful until a former professor of his gave him a letter of introduction to an editor of the New York Journal. Briggs work so impressed owner William Randolph Hearst that he sent Briggs to Chicago to work with the Examiner and the American. The artist created one of the first daily continuity comic strips, A. Piker Clerk, in 1904, for the Chicago American.
It was in Chicago, with the inspiration and support of noted Chicago Tribune cartoonist John T. McCutcheon, that Briggs developed the particular brand of warm, nostalgic humor for which he became famous. During his 17 years in Chicago, and the remaining 13 years of his short life spent with the New York Tribune, Briggs created several other strips and dozens of single-panel series.
Titles like When a Feller Needs a Friend, The Days of Real Sport, and Aint It a Grand and Glorious Feelin? began to enter the nations vocabulary, encapsulating the cartoons they named, elements of universal emotional experience. Briggs simple, seemingly casual graphic style, its sketchy stroke rendering a multitude of telling details, was perfectly suited to the warm, affectionate character of the mini-dramas it presented.
A popular figure, and as personally sympathetic as his perceptive cartoons, Briggs was much in demand as a public speaker and earned $100 an evening delivering chalk talks. In 1914, he accepted a five-week contract for $500 a week to appear on the vaudeville circuit. His cartoons were collected in many volumes, and one of his strips, Mr. And Mrs., was continued in syndication for many years after his death in 1930.
(Information on the biography above is based on writings from the book, "The Encyclopedia of American Comics," edited by Ron Goulart.)
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Clare Briggs is also mentioned in these AskART essays:
Cartoonists
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