Winsor McCay, his life and art

Canemaker reviews and fully analyzes McCay's achievements in print and film, examining his work in relation to his life, his family, and to American culture and values of the period. Original art from all of McCay's endeavors and rare personal photographs, all lovingly preserved by the family, provide a lavish visual counterpart to Canemaker's fascinating text. This painstakingly thorough biography begins with McCay's childhood in pioneer Michigan, circa 1870, and explores his earliest attempts to find an artistic voice in Chicago and turn-of-the-century Cincinnati, his work with circus posters, as a quick-sketch newspaper reporter, as a headliner chalk-talk artist in vaudeville, as crown jewel in William Randolph Hearst's grand line-up of newspaper cartoonists, and as the greatest of the early animators.