'Why Herr Schnitzel Failed in Business' (New York World, 3 April 1898).
Dan McCarthy was a late 19th-century American caricaturist and cartoonist, who worked for the New York World during the 1890s. Besides being a political cartoonist, he also contributed elaborate Sunday comic pages, including the short-lived features 'Noah's Ark' (1897) and 'The Streets of New York' (1900). In 1901, he was an initiator of one of the first cartooning schools in New York City.
Life and career
Daniel H. McCarthy was born in 1860 or 1861 in Syracuse, New York. His obituary in the Syracuse Herald-Journal (17 February 1905) said he was christened Dennis, but adopted the name of Daniel/Dan after going to New York.
In his hometown, McCarthy was initially employed by the railroads, working his way up to locomotive engineer. He eventually changed course and turned to caricature drawing. Around 1887, he moved to New York City, where he secured a position with The Evening Telegram, published by James Gordon Bennett Sr. The publisher noticed his talent and sent him to Paris, where he worked and studied for a year. On his return to his home country, McCarthy first became chief cartoonist of the Massachusetts newspaper The Recorder, before joining the art staff of the New York World, owned by Joseph Pulitzer. In addition to his newspaper work, McCarthy also worked for humor weeklies. He was especially known as a masterful character illustrator of politicians.
New York World
In the Sunday editions of the New York World, McCarthy created a handful of features, but also a couple of one-shot Sunday pages for the full-color comics supplement. One notable page, printed on 3 April 1898 under the title 'Why Herr Schnitzel Failed in Business', spoofed the men's social clubs of the day. Another notable one-shot was 'The American Sky-Scraper Is a Modern Tower of Babel' (20 February 1898), for which the cartoonist used a full Sunday newspaper page to draw a tableaux caricature of the modern cityscape, with its skyscrapers and different types of characters.
Between 28 March and 16 May 1897, McCarthy created the Sunday panel 'Noah's Ark', and from 3 to 24 May 1900, he contributed the weekday panel 'The Streets of New York' to the World. As staff artist, he also filled in on other cartoonist's features every now and then, for instance drawing the final installment of J.B. Lowitz's 'Gay Gazoozaland' cartoon panel (7 November 1897), and episodes of J. Campbell Cory's western strip 'Lariat Pete' (1901).
Editorial cartoon from the New York Journal and Advertiser (15 January 1899).
National School of Caricature
Together with his business partner Mort M. Burger, McCarthy ran the National School of Caricature, which had its offices in the Pulitzer Building on Park Row, New York City. Starting in 1901, they began advertising their services in teaching newspaper caricaturing by mail in the "Help Wanted" columns of the New York Herald and other newspapers. In a 23 April 1902 interview with Printers' Ink magazine, McCarthy said that their course of 35 weeks had over 400 regular pupils, not only in the United States, but also in Canada, Great Britain, France and Germany. Besides caricaturing, the curriculum also included "cartooning, sketching from life, the study of original action, decorative designing, lettering, process paper drawing and landscape sketching, newspaper and commercial designing and all branches of illustrating, including wash and crayon drawing".
Among the school's students have been illustrator/cartoonist Marjorie Organ, artist/caricaturist George L. Carlson and the cartoonist Harold Ruland.
Death
According to his obituary in The Meriden Journal on 17 February 1905, McCarthy was stricken with inflammatory rheumatism a couple of weeks before his death. This aggravated the heart trouble he had been suffering from for a long time. On 16 February, Daniel McCarthy died at his home on 58 West 116th Street, at the age of 44.
'The American Sky-Scraper Is a Modern Tower of Babel' (20 February 1898).