Winsor McCay
Cartoonist, Comic Strip Creator
1869 – 1934
Who was Winsor McCay?
Zenas Winsor McCay was an American cartoonist and animator. He is best known for the comic strip Little Nemo and the animated film Gertie the Dinosaur. For contractual reasons, he worked under the pen name Silas on the comic strip Dream of the Rarebit Fiend.
From a young age, McCay was a quick, prolific, and technically dextrous artist. He started his professional career making posters and performing for dime museums, and began illustrating newspapers and magazines in 1898. He joined the New York Herald in 1903, where he created popular comic strips such as Little Sammy Sneeze and Dream of the Rarebit Fiend. In 1905, his signature strip Little Nemo in Slumberland debuted, a fantasy strip in an Art Nouveau style, about a young boy and his adventurous dreams. The strip demonstrated McCay's strong graphic sense and mastery of color and linear perspective. McCay experimented with the formal elements of the comic strip page, arranging and sizing panels to increase impact and enhance elements of the narrative. McCay also produced numerous detailed editorial cartoons and was a popular performer of chalk talks on the vaudeville circuit.
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- Born
- Sep 26, 1869
Spring Lake - Also known as
- Zenas Winsor McKay
- Winsor McKay
- Winsor Z. McCay
- Winsor MacCay
- Winsor Zenic McCay
- Silas
- Parents
- Spouses
- Maude Leonore Dufour
(1891 - 1934/07/26)
- Maude Leonore Dufour
- Children
- Ethnicity
- White American
- Nationality
- United States of America
- Canada
- Profession
- Education
- Cleary University
(1886 - ) - Eastern Michigan University
- Cleary University
- Lived in
- Ypsilanti
- Cincinnati
- Chicago
- Died
- Jul 26, 1934
Brooklyn - Resting place
- Cemetery of the Evergreens
Submitted
on July 23, 2013
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"Winsor McCay." Biographies.net. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 25 Apr. 2024. <https://www.biographies.net/people/en/winsor_mccay>.
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