Coulton Waugh
Encyclopedia
Cornwall
Cornwall is a unitary authority and ceremonial county of England, within the United Kingdom. It is bordered to the north and west by the Celtic Sea, to the south by the English Channel, and to the east by the county of Devon, over the River Tamar. Cornwall has a population of , and covers an area of...
, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
- May 23, 1973) was a cartoonist
Cartoonist
A cartoonist is a person who specializes in drawing cartoons. This work is usually humorous, mainly created for entertainment, political commentary or advertising...
, painter
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...
, teacher
Teacher
A teacher or schoolteacher is a person who provides education for pupils and students . The role of teacher is often formal and ongoing, carried out at a school or other place of formal education. In many countries, a person who wishes to become a teacher must first obtain specified professional...
and author
Author
An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...
, best known for his illustration work on the comic strip
Comic strip
A comic strip is a sequence of drawings arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions....
Dickie Dare
Dickie Dare
Dickie Dare was a comic strip syndicated by AP Newsfeatures. Launched July 31, 1933, it was the first comic strip created by Milton Caniff before he began Terry and the Pirates....
and his book The Comics (1947), the first major study of the field.
His father was the marine artist Frederick Judd Waugh
Frederick Judd Waugh
Frederick Judd Waugh was an American artist, primarily known as a marine artist. During World War I, he designed ship camouflage for the U.S. Navy, under the direction of Everett L. Warner.-Background:...
, and his grandfather was the Philadelphia portrait painter Samuel Waugh
Samuel Waugh
Samuel Waugh was a 19th century painter.Born in Mercer, Pennsylvania, he became one of the most famous portrait painters of Philadelphia...
. In 1907 his family moved to the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, and Waugh was enrolled at New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
's Art Students League
Art Students League of New York
The Art Students League of New York is an art school located on West 57th Street in New York City. The League has historically been known for its broad appeal to both amateurs and professional artists, and has maintained for over 130 years a tradition of offering reasonably priced classes on a...
where he studied with George Bridgman
George Bridgman
George Brant Bridgman was a Canadian-American painter, writer, and teacher in the fields of anatomy and figure drawing. Bridgman taught anatomy for artists at the Art Students League of New York for some 45 years....
, Frank Dumond and John Carlson.
By 1916 Coulton was employed as a textile
Textile
A textile or cloth is a flexible woven material consisting of a network of natural or artificial fibres often referred to as thread or yarn. Yarn is produced by spinning raw fibres of wool, flax, cotton, or other material to produce long strands...
designer. Two years later, he married Elizabeth Jenkinson. In 1921 the couple moved to Provincetown, Massachusetts
Provincetown, Massachusetts
Provincetown is a New England town located at the extreme tip of Cape Cod in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 3,431 at the 2000 census, with an estimated 2007 population of 3,174...
where they operated a model ship and hooked rug shop for 11 years. His paintings were displayed at New York's Hudson Walker Gallery, and he also was known for his pictorial maps and hand-colored lithographs.
Maps
Cape Cod
Cape Cod, often referred to locally as simply the Cape, is a cape in the easternmost portion of the state of Massachusetts, in the Northeastern United States...
(1926) and Newburgh, New York
Newburgh (city), New York
Newburgh is a city located in Orange County, New York, United States, north of New York City, and south of Albany, on the Hudson River. Newburgh is a principal city of the Poughkeepsie-Newburgh-Middletown metropolitan area, which includes all of Dutchess and Orange counties. The Newburgh area was...
(1958). His map of California (1948) was a collaboration with his wife Odin Burvik. One of his Cape Cod maps was detailed by Laura Guadnazno in the Provincetown Banner:
- Coulton Waugh lived near his father in the house known as the "oldest house" at 72 Commercial St., where he ran a ship model shop. Coulton was a professional sailor and made scale drawings of historic ships, designed fabrics, and made decorative maps and charts... Waugh was considered to have revived, if not originated the art of decorative map making when he exhibited a large map of silk in 1918 at the International Silk Show in New York City. His map of Cape Cod is one of the most decorative ever prepared. The central cartouche shows the Mayflower and two Pilgrims in armor. The border was reproduced from a drawing cut with a knife in the wood-block technique. The top and bottom borders are of a stylized Cape Cod landscape and the sides borders are decorated with the images of six famous ships.
Comic strips
Milton Caniff
Milton Arthur Paul Caniff was an American cartoonist famous for the Terry and the Pirates and Steve Canyon comic strips.-Biography:...
, Dickie Dare began July 31, 1933. Imaginative 12-year-old Dickie, who dreamed himself into adventures with characters from history, was joined in 1934 with writer Dan Flynn, a friend of Dickie's father, and the two had many seagoing adventures. When Caniff left in 1934 to do Terry and the Pirates
Terry and the Pirates (comic strip)
Terry and the Pirates was an action-adventure comic strip created by cartoonist Milton Caniff. Captain Joseph Patterson, editor for the Chicago Tribune New York News Syndicate, had admired Caniff’s work on the children's adventure strip Dickie Dare and hired him to create the new adventure strip,...
, Waugh began drawing Dickie Dare in the middle of a story. In 1944, when Waugh left the strip to work on Hank (1945), his wife and assistant, Odin Burvik, took over Dickie Dare in 1944-47, followed by Fran Matera
Fran Matera
Francis "Fran" Matera is an American comic strip artist best known for his King Features Syndicate adventure strip Steve Roper and Mike Nomad from 1984 to 2004. In addition to his extensive experience in newspaper strips, Matera also spent many years in the comic book industry, particularly for...
(1948-49). But Waugh eventually returned to the strip in 1950-58 with the 12-year-old Dickie growing up to become a Navy Cadet.
Between his stints on Dickie Dare, Waugh created his own short-lived but notable strip, Hank, which began April 30, 1945 in the New York newspaper PM
PM (newspaper)
PM was a leftist New York City daily newspaper published by Ralph Ingersoll from June 1940 to June 1948 and bankrolled by the eccentric Chicago millionaire Marshall Field III....
. The story of a disabled GI returning to civilian life, Hank had a unique look due to Waugh's decorative art style, combined with dialogue lettered in upper and lower case rather than the accepted convention of all upper case lettering in balloons and captions. Some balloons were done with white lettering in black balloons. The uniqueness of Hank continued below its surface, as Waugh sought to raise questions about the reasons for war, and how it might be prevented by the next generation. Waugh discontinued it at the very end of 1945 due to eyestrain.
Books
Comic strip
A comic strip is a sequence of drawings arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions....
s. The book was reviewed in 1948 as fulfilling "the need for a thoroughgoing study of this flourishing branch of popular literature". Waugh also wrote a series of instructional books, including two on painting with palette knives, and he was the editor during the 1940s and 1950s of the textbooks used in the home study course of Art Instruction, Inc.
Art Instruction Schools
Art Instruction Schools, better known to many as Art Instruction, Inc., is a home study correspondence course providing training in cartooning and illustration...
His other books include Space Answer Book (1972) and Fish and Underwater LIfe.
During the 1930s and 1940s, Waugh's studio was in suburban Newburgh, New York
Newburgh (city), New York
Newburgh is a city located in Orange County, New York, United States, north of New York City, and south of Albany, on the Hudson River. Newburgh is a principal city of the Poughkeepsie-Newburgh-Middletown metropolitan area, which includes all of Dutchess and Orange counties. The Newburgh area was...
. His works are held in the collections of museums in Ohio, New York and Iowa. The University of Syracuse holds his papers.