Olde Posts Addenda (7)

    Since all of the news is "breaking" these days, here are some more stories which have broken and are related to older news items in MM. 

Jasper Francis Cropsey (1823-1900) Cropsey has been a subject in MM because I appreciate landscape paintings and, more importantly, because a painting of his was once found on the campus of UWO (Western). Forty-five years ago, the selling of Backwoods of America caused quite a controversy, even though $665,000 was received by UWO. For a discussion of the "Cropsey Controversy" see, Jasper Cropsey and McIntosh Gallery in the Winter, where it is discussed again. In a post about The Hudson River School it is noted that Cropsey's "Autumn Landscape With Cattle" sold for $325,000 (US) in 2021. The work pictured below is now offered by Questroyal Fine Art, if you are Christmas shopping. 

Doug Sneyd (R.I.P.) - Art of a Different Kind
   Back in 2017, I discussed three Canadian Cartoonists, Barry Blitt, Bruce McCall and Doug Sneyd. Mr. Sneyd and my mother-in-law attended the same school in Guelph. He died in Orillia in January, 2025. Apart from my brief bit in MM, more is learned in the obituary from Mundell Funeral Home LTD. Douglas "Doug" Mord Sneyd:
   "Doug was a renowned commercial artist, illustrator, and cartoonist. He was born in Guelph Ontario, one of seven siblings. From humble beginnings, as a teenager, Doug sketched silhouettes at the Canadian National Exhibition. After high school, Doug was employed as a commercial and portrait artist in Montreal and Toronto....

Doug became a cartoonist for Playboy magazine in 1964 and was the longest contributor with over 400 full-page colour cartoons. Also in the mid 1960s, Doug became a daily political cartoonist, first with “Doug Sneyd” in the Toronto Star and later with “Scoops” that he syndicated in over 150 North American papers. These features ran for nearly 20-years. Doug followed up with a heartwarming feature, “Wee Whimsy.”

Photos and the War in Vietnam

   You will have seen the Pulitzer Prize-winning photo of the child who is generally referred to as "Napalm Girl", and I provide one in that post. That girl is now a grown woman, who lives in Ontario. In another post, "Napalm Girl" (Again), I discussed the controversy which has developed around who actually took the photo. I provide photos in those posts and will not do so again.
   The addenda is this: a film about the controversy has just been released and there will be more reviews, like this one: "‘The Stringer: The Man Who Took the Photo’ Review: Freelancing Woes: Was a Freelance Photographer Intentionally Left out of the Famous Vietnam War Photo of “Napalm Girl”?" Beatrice Loayza, New York Times, Nov. 27, 2025.
   "As far as documentaries go, Bao Nguyen’s “The Stringer” is a relatively straightforward work of investigative reportage. Its objective? To uncover the truth behind “The Terror of War,” a.k.a. “Napalm Girl,” the Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of Kim Phuc Phan Thi, a naked Vietnamese girl who is fleeing her village with other children in the aftermath of a 1972 napalm attack."
   There is another review in The Globe and Mail: "I Heard the Rumours About the 'Napalm Girl' Photograph Decades Ago: The Question of Who Took It Reflects the Ambiguity of War," Denise Chong, Dec. 5, 2025.
Post Script: 
  The following article was written a day after I posted this. Given that MM has provided so much about this incident, I thought it should be included. The subtitle summarizes the point which is being made by someone who was there: "I Was There When 'Napalm Girl' Was Photographed: The Stringer Does Nothing to Shake My Strong Belief That Nick Ut Captured the Famous Image," David Burnett, The Washington Post, Dec. 10, 2025.

Menus
   In 2018 I told you about collections of menus in Food History. If you are shopping for someone who likes to cook or dine out, this new book is an option: Tastes and Traditions: A Journey Through Menu History, by Nathalie Cooke. Professor Cooke is in the Department of English at McGill, where this is found: 
Nathalie Cooke's Latest Book: Tastes and Traditions. It is published by Reaktion Books and is found on Amazon or available from Indigo, where more can be learned.
   There is also this review by James Chatto in the October issue of the Literary Review of Canada: 

"À la carte: "According to a delicious art form."An English literature professor at McGill University, Nathalie Cooke is an expert at detecting nuances of meaning and historical resonance in the written word. Having set out her thesis that an old menu can tell “the belated reader” much more than simply what was once for dinner, she organizes her material according to half a dozen themes, each one explored through a generous number of examples. Cooke is a skillful curator, and her carefully chosen, clever juxtapositions prevent her book from being a mere list or catalogue. The first chapter, for instance, considers the design and visual appeal of menus, taking us from handwritten and painted mementoes of elaborate feasts hosted by Louis XV in the 1750s to a modern Bangkok restaurant’s bill of fare composed entirely of emoji. En route, we encounter cards designed by Toulouse-Lautrec and Albert Robida, the gorgeous offerings of luxury ocean liners, and the mixed-media assemblages of the 1960s artist-chef Daniel Spoerri’s “New Realism.”
  If you add her 190 illustrations to the ones found in my post about menu collections, you will have a substantial visual resource related to food. If you need more convincing, see also: "Old Menus Serve up a Glimpse of our Past; McGill Professor Nathalie Cooke Whets Readers' Appetite with a Book on the Evolution of Dining," Susan Schwartz, Montreal Gazette, August, 23, 2025.

Canadian Cartoonists

     Once again, you should know that I have been preoccupied and am attempting to quickly increase my posts for December and avoid shopping. So, given quick consideration are a few Canadian cartoonists and illustrators who would otherwise deserve more of our attention.

Barry Blitt


   
     If you have your own shopping to do, you might consider buying the book Blitt by Barry Blitt. In it you will find “caricatures of the public figures, mainly entertainers and politicians, who've occupied the limelight from the late 1980s on. It's got Michael Jackson holding an infant over an apartment-building railing, Vladimir Putin depicted as a figure-skater prancing around the ice, Pope Francis doing snow angels and, of course, Donald Trump, mid-air, coming down for a big, fat belly flop in the American pool.”
     Perhaps you have wondered, “How did a Jewish kid [Blitt] from the insular Montreal suburb of Côte Saint-Luc end up in the thick of New York's cosmopolitan media scene, published by everyone, the unlikely owner of playwright Arthur Miller's old house?”, and if so, you will find the answer in this review: “Catcher of the Wry: A New Collection of Satirical Sketches Highlights Cartoonist Barry Blitt's Singular Take on the Past Few Decades,” by Alec Scott, G&M, Nov. 10, 2017.

Bruce McCall


(Sorry about the quality of the image.
The billboard says "Bay of Pigs Now Called Porky's Cove)

     Much of Blitt’s work appears in The New Yorker where the covers are also often done by another Canadian, Bruce McCall. His (McCall’s) first appeared in 1995 and he has now done over 70 of them. He also provides the odd cartoon and articles such as “Not So Fast, Canada”, a funny one found in the July 31st, 2017  issue. He has published a number of books, including Thin Ice which describes growing up in Simcoe and elsewhere here in Ontario.

Doug Sneyd

   
     I only know of Mr. Sneyd because of the stories I have heard about him. He was a friend of my father-in-law who just passed away on Dec. 2nd. [this was the major preoccupation]. During the late summer and early fall, he tried to get to Orillia to see Doug, but was unable to do so.

    Mr. Sneyd has been a cartoonist for Playboy since the 1960s. Given the new prudishness and puritanism, I chose to supply his image rather than one of his cartoons. You can find them in the book,The Art of Doug Sneyd or you can see and buy them from his web site: Sneyd: The Art of Playboy Cartoonist Doug Sneyd.

Post Script
     The stories we heard about Mr. Sneyd generally had to do with fine parties and good times and were more about his conviviality than his career. After a little poking around, however, I have learned that his career was perhaps, shall we say, more illustrious than I indicated. The book mentioned above, for example, was nominated for an Eisner Award back in 2012 in the category “Best Humor Publication.” If you are dismissive of the Playboy cartoons as bordering on the ‘pornographic’, you should know that he created many political ones for newspapers such as The Washington Post and The Boston Globe. In the latter I found this article about him from forty years ago: “Mixing the Comic Strip and Editorial Cartoon,” (July 23, 1978)

    “As a high school student in Ontario, Canada, Doug Sneyd got no further than lesson 18 in the Famous Artists correspondence course. That one was titled “Earn While You Learn.” He decided to do just that.
     Steyd, now 46, has been earning his living as an illustrator and cartoonist ever since. After 12 years as a regular cartoonist for Playboy magazine and eight years doing an internationally-syndicated political panel, Sneyd has created SCOOPS, which begins today and will appear each Sunday on the Op Ed page of The Globe.
     SCOOPS now appears in 112 newspapers.” [c.1978]

     The article concludes with Sneyd noting that with the help of his family he runs a “real cottage industry” from his lakeside home in Ontario.
     Cartoons were an important feature at Playboy. Recently, when Mr Hefner died, it was noted in one piece that he “was as devoted to cartoonists as he was to the centerfold,” and that is why Sneyd had  such well-known cartoonist colleagues as, Al Jaffee, Jules Feiffer, Shel Silverstein and Arnold Roth. See: “Hugh Hefner Dreamed of Being a Cartoonist; Instead, He Changed the Market for Top Comic Artists,” Michael Cavna, The Washington Post, Sept. 28, 2017.
     A few years ago Sneyd was honoured at the ToonSeum, which is a museum in Pittsburgh that celebrates the comic and cartoon arts. See: “Bunny Tales: Legendary Playboy Cartoonist Doug Sneyd Will Give Fans a Glimpse Into His Life and Art,” Dan Majors, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, April 19, 2012:

     "Joe Wos, executive director of the ToonSeum on Liberty Avenue, Downtown, has as his guest tonight legendary cartoonist Doug Sneyd, whose art has adorned the pages of Playboy magazine for nearly 50 years.
"Like most men, I bought Playboy for the cartoons," said Mr. Wos, who opened the cartoon museum almost three years ago. "And I always loved his work.
"He is able to meld two worlds. The beauty of the human form, these beautiful, voluptuous women. And, at the same time, he caricatures human nature, poking gentle fun at our sexual hang-ups and foibles. He has tremendous insight."
Mr. Sneyd, 80, of Ontario, Canada, arrived in town this morning for the Pittsburgh Comic Con this weekend. While some artists are shy, even reclusive, Mr. Sneyd said he delights in traveling and meeting fans.
Mr. Wos, a cartoonist himself, said Mr. Sneyd is one of his heroes.
"There's no question that he is one of the greatest Playboy artists ever," he said. "His wit is still biting and satirical today. For example, he has some rough sketches for tonight's exhibit that Playboy declined to use. One shows a woman in bed between two men who are wearing dark glasses and earpieces and the caption is 'How long have you guys been in the Secret Service?' Well, this was done long before today's controversy. His work remains timely."


Graydon Carter

 
     The vulgarian is the guy on the right who is frequently attacked by the Canadian Carter who is the gent on the left. Although he is not a cartoonist, he is another Canadian who went south and found success. He is retiring this month after 25 years as the editor of Vanity Fair. This year he became a Member of the Order of Canada “For his contributions to popular culture and current affairs as a skilled editor and publisher.”

Post Script:
    I did not know that Carter was the editor of the short-lived periodical Canadian Review which was published between 1974-1977. I see that the university nearby has most of the run (although the issues are in storage). Perhaps I will have them pulled in the new year and include them among my “Periodical Ramblings”.