Doolittle, Amos (18 May 1754–31 January 1832), engraver, was born in Cheshire, Connecticut, the son of Ambrose Doolittle and Martha Munson (occupations unknown). Doolittle apprenticed under Eliakim Hitchcock, a silversmith, but he may have taught himself to engrave copper plates. By 1774, he was living in New Haven, where he remained until his death. He appears to have prospered, owning a house and shop on College Street in which he rented out a large room to individuals and organizations, including the Masons, who met there from 1801 to 1826. Doolittle was himself a dedicated Mason from 1792 until his death....
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Doolittle, Amos (1754-1832), engraver
Kate Steinway
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Gropper, William (1897-1977), painter and caricaturist
Norma S. Steinberg
Gropper, William (03 December 1897–07 January 1977), painter and caricaturist, was born in New York City, the son of Harry Gropper and Jenny Nidel, both workers in garment-trade sweatshops in New York’s Lower East Side. When he completed grammar school, he won a scholarship to the National Academy of Design but stayed only a few months. Their requirement for drawing from casts disappointed Gropper, already experienced in drawing from life in classes at the Ferrer School with ...
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Hirschfeld, Albert (1903-2003), caricaturist
Robert C. Harvey
Hirschfeld, Albert (21 June 1903–20 January 2003), caricaturist, was born in St. Louis, Missouri, the third son of Isaac Hirschfeld, an occasionally employed salesman, and Rebecca Rothberg, the driving force of the family and, as a sales clerk in a department store, its chief support. Albert proved a prodigy of an artist, and when he was eleven his mother, advised to take her son to New York City for better education in art, packed up the family and moved there. Albert attended public school, then the Art Students League and at night the National Academy of Design. He was soon fascinated by vaudeville and theater, and at age seventeen he began his lifelong association with the entertainment industry as an errand boy for Goldwyn Pictures Publicity Department in New York. A year later he was briefly art director at Selznick Pictures before he opened his own art agency to service the studio on a contract basis. When the producer went bankrupt, Hirschfeld was left in debt, and in 1923 he went to work for Warner Brothers. He retired his debts in a year....
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Mauldin, William Henry (29 October 1921–22 January 2003)
Bruce J. Evensen
Mauldin, William Henry (29 October 1921–22 January 2003), Pulitzer Prize–winning editorial cartoonist, was born in Mountain Park, just east of Alamogordo, New Mexico, the second son of Sidney Albert Mauldin, a wrench salesman, outdoor privy builder, and odd-jobman, and Edith Katrina (Bemis) Mauldin. Bill was often confined to his bed by rickets as a kid and drew pictures of his daydreams. At age thirteen he took a correspondence course for cartoonists. His family traveled southwest and northern New Mexico looking for work during the Great Depression. His parents divorced when he was seventeen years old, and he headed to Phoenix, Arizona, on his own. A loan from his maternal grandmother paid his tuition to the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts in 1939, where he studied under the ...
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Mauldin, William Henry (29 October 1921–22 January 2003)
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William Henry (Bill) Mauldin. Bill Mauldin holding Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoon, 1959. Photograph by Bob Briggs. Courtesy of the Library of Congress (LC-DIG-ppmsca-03232).
