Lot 1251: OUTCAULT, RICHARD FELTON. 1863-1928.- "Buster Brown," pen and ink on Bristol board, 584 x 450 mm, some soiling, discoloring and pinpricks.

"Buster Brown," pen and ink on Bristol board, 584 x 450 mm, some soiling, discoloring and pinpricks. Published : Full-page cartoon for the "Comic Section," The New York Herald , September 17, 1905. WITH: "Buster Brown on his Uncle Jack's Farm," color proof, 535 x 400 mm, New York Herald , 1904. Provenance : Alfred B. Hunt. This and the following two drawings record events on Buster's visit to his Aunt Emeline and Uncle Jack's estate in Lenox, Mass. R.F. Outcault invented the American comic strip during the New York newspaper wars of the 1890s. While Joseph Pulitzer was battling with William Randolph Hearst for the supremacy of the World over the Journal , Outcault introduced a single panel strip set in Hogan's Alley in Pulitzer's Sunday supplement in 1895. The World's printer decided to use a new yellow ink on the night shirt of one of the slum urchins and "The Yellow Kid" was born. His weekly sardonic messages scrawled on the nightshirt grew so popular that the next year Hearst hired Outcault out from under Pulitzer to draw "The Yellow Kid" for him. Then Pulitzer had staff artist George Luks draw another "The Yellow Kid," and from this competition arose the term "yellow journalism" to describe any sensational journalism like that practiced by both Pulitzer and Hearst. Outcault retired "The Yellow Kid" when he moved over to the more genteel New York Herald . He now introduced a little middle class boy named Buster Brown and his dog Tige. Based in part on the cartoonist's own son, Buster got into all sorts of mischief every week and always got paddled by his Ma just before the final panel. The strip had no greater fan than young Vladimir Nabokov: "Every episode ended in a tremendous spanking for Buster, which was administered by his wasp-waisted but powerful Ma, who used a slipper, a hairbrush, a brittle umbrella, anything—even the bludgeon of a helpful policeman—and drew puffs of dust from the seat of his pants. As I had never experienced corporal punishment in any form whatsoever, those pictures conveyed to me the impression of strange, exotic tortures, no different from, say, the burying of a trussed live criminal up to his chin in torrid desert sand." A brilliant self-promoter, Outcault licensed Buster and Tige for all sorts of products, the most enduring being Buster Brown Shoes.