Little Jimmy / four bears
Date1933
Artist
James Swinnerton
(American painter and cartoonist, 1875–1974)
Illustration CitationSyndicated comic strip "Little Jimmy," by James Swinnerton, December 11, 1933, King Features Syndicate, Inc.
MediumInk on illustration board
Dimensionssheet: 8 15/16 × 11 1/4 in. (22.7 × 28.6 cm)
Credit LineAcquisition Fund, 1991
Object number1991-73
On View
Not on viewClassificationsDRAWING
Label TextJames Swinnerton was studying at the Mark Hopkins School of Design, San Francisco, when William Randolph Hearst.hired him Swinnerton as a sketch artist for The San Francisco Examiner in 1892. For that newspaper he created the comic strip the Weather Bears, part of the daily weather report. Its popularity led to his strip The Little Bears and to his career as one of America's first creators of comic strips with ogoing characters. In 1896, Hearst transferred Swinnerton to New York City, where in 1904 he began his most longest-running strip, Little Jimmy, about a little boy who often loses his groceries after being sent to a shop, getting distracted by a variety of humorous characters.
