Thursday 7 February 2008

Mystery cartoonist


This photo was recently sold on eBay with the description:
"a very nice vintage photo showing a cartoonist with pen and ink on his desk. Lots of familiar characters adorn the walls like Mickey, Minny, Donald Duck etc. There is also a photo of Walt Disney on the wall. I was told the cartoonist was Carl Barks, but I have been unable to find a photo of him in his youth to determine if that is true or not. Sold as is. EX condition. 8 x 10. Original photo."

Now, this obviously isn't Carl Barks and I guess it's from the mid/late 40's judging by the art in the background. (I can identify two pieces of Barney Google in army clothes.) So, who is this. A young cartoonist that never made it but was able to collect a nice wall of originals and prints. Or some one familar in the early stages of his career?

Anyone out there who knows?

Two close ups for those of you who wants to give a shot at trying to identify the art on the wall...

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Quite enigmatic. I can't identify the artist. But the artwork. On the right hand just underneath the pic of a cartoon style house there's a still photo from Porky Pig movie You Ought to be in Pictures (1940). Porky shakes hand with Leon Schlesinger. And to the left, right under the photo of Walt(?), there's a cover from very first issue of digest sized Italian Topolino (1949). Propably not an original, since it seems to have colors. http://coa.inducks.org/issue.php?c=it/TL++++1
The picture on the top middle with small characters jumping over the candle, looks a lot like Rose O'Neill's art work (Kewpies), but I'm not sure.

Best Wishes
Timo

Bob Foster said...

My first reaction to this photo was that it's a young Andy Engman.
When I first worked at Disney Studios in 1970, one of the first people I met was Andy. If this photo is from around 1940, he would have been 29 years old. He was born in 1911 in Finland. Wikipedia says he worked at Disney's from 1937 until 1971.
Lots more information about him on Google.

Like your blog. Interesting stuff.

Joakim Gunnarsson said...

Thanks, Bob!