The Brandywine Museum Showcases WIlliam Steig's Cartoons & Childrens Books

Written by Charles Gartside Thursday, 09 February 2012 22:47

Chadds Ford, PA.- The Brandywine Museum is pleased to present "Comic Catharsis: A Gift of Cartoons by William Steig" on view at the museum through March 11th. Although best known today as the creator of Shrek, William Steig (1907-2003) first achieved fame for his cartoons and covers for The New Yorker and his published books of drawings such as The Lonely Ones (1942), Small Fry (1944), and Dreams of Glory and Other Drawings. (1953). His situational gags are humorous and offer keen observations on various aspects of human relationships. Steig’s drawing style in early works show emphatic, incisive lines and tonal washes. Gradually he moved to simpler contour line drawings of figures inspired by the art of Pablo Picasso and the free-flowing dream-like images of Marc Chagall. Late in Steig’s career he began creating children’s books that explore, in a lighter vein, many of the same themes as his cartoons for adults.

Steig wrote and illustrated over 30 acclaimed works for children, including the Caldecott-winning Sylvester and the Magic Pebble (1969) and Shrek (1990). The exhibition will feature over 100 works donated to the Brandywine River Museum in 2010 by Jeanne Steig from the artist’s estate, as well as selected works for children on loan from the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art and private collections.

William Steig (November 14, 1907 – October 3, 2003) was most noted for the books 'Sylvester and the Magic Pebble', 'Abel's Island' and 'Doctor De Soto', as well as for having created the character Shrek, who inspired the popular movie series. Steig was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Polish-Jewish immigrants from Austria, both socialists. His father was a house painter, and his mother was a seamstress who encouraged his artistic leanings. As a child, he dabbled in painting and was an avid reader of literature. Among other works, he was said to have been especially fascinated by Pinocchio. In addition to his artistic endeavors, he also did well at athletics, being a member of the collegiate All-American water polo team. He graduated from Townsend Harris High School at 15 but never completed college, though he attended three, spending two years at City College of New York, three years at the National Academy of Design and a mere five days at the Yale School of Fine Arts before dropping out of each.


His brother Irwin was a journalist and painter, and his brother Henry was a writer who played the saxophone and painted. His brother Arthur was a writer and poet, who, according to Steig, read The Nation in the cradle, was telepathic and "drew as well as Picasso or Matisse." When his family had financial problems during the Great Depression, he began drawing cartoons as a freelance artist and sold his first cartoon to The New Yorker in 1930. Living in Gaylordsville, Connecticut, he soon became successful.

Over decades, he contributed more than 1600 cartoons to the magazine, including 117 covers, leading Newsweek to dub him the "King of Cartoons." Steig was one of 250 sculptors who exhibited in the 3rd Sculpture International held at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in the summer of 1949. Steig was a patient of the psychiatrist Wilhelm Reich and illustrated Reich's polemic, Listen, Little Man. In 1968, he wrote his first children's book. He excelled here as well, and his third book, 'Sylvester and the Magic Pebble' (1969), won the Caldecott Medal. He went on to write more than 30 children's books, including the Doctor DeSoto series, and he continued to write into his nineties. Among his other well-known works, the picture book Shrek! (1990) formed the basis for the Dreamworks Animation popular film Shrek.


In the mid-1960s, Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania in the historic Brandywine Valley, faced possible massive industrial development. The impact would have dramatically changed the character and future of a community that was then largely rural.  At the same time, and for decades thereafter, development proposed throughout the region, particularly in floodplain areas, threatened to devastate water supplies for numerous communities in southeastern Pennsylvania and northern Delaware, including the City of Wilmington. Appreciating the need for rapid action, a group of local residents bought endangered land and founded the Brandywine Conservancy in 1967. The first conservation easements, protecting more than five and one-half miles along the Brandywine, were granted in 1969. Today, the Conservancy holds more than 430 conservation easements and has protected more than 44,000 acres in Chester and Delaware counties, Pennsylvania, and in New Castle County, Delaware. In 1971, the Conservancy opened the Brandywine River Museum in the renovated Hoffman’s Mill, a former gristmill built in 1864 that was part of the Conservancy’s first preservation efforts. With nearly six million visitors to date, the museum has established an international reputation for its unparalleled collection and its dedication to American art with primary emphasis on the art of the Brandywine region, American illustration, still life and landscape painting, and the work of the Wyeth family. Among the hundreds of artists represented are Howard Pyle, many students of Pyle who affected the course of American illustration, N. C. Wyeth, Andrew Wyeth, and Jamie Wyeth.  There is work by hundreds of famous illustrators.  Landscape, still life, portrait and genre painting includes work by Benjamin West, Gilbert Stuart, Asher Durand, W. T. Richards, William Harnett, John Haberle, J. D. Chalfant, Horace Pippin, and many others, while the major still life collection includes paintings by William Harnett, John Peto, George Cope, John Haberle, Horace Pippin, and many more artists.  Nearly 300 special exhibitions have been shown in the museum’s six galleries, along with constant installations of work from the collection. Visit the museum's website at ... www.brandywinemuseum.org

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