Guide to the Wyncie King Collection RG 15.5

Summary Information

Repository

Sarah Lawrence College Archives

Creator

King, Wyncie, 1884-1961

Title

Wyncie King Collection

ID

RG 15.5

Date

undated, 1943-1944

Extent

1.25 linear feet

Language

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Administrative Information

Publication Information

Sarah Lawrence College Archives 9/2/2013

Terms of Use

Collection is open for research. Reproductions of Horace Gregory, Joseph Campbell, and Stephen Spender are owned by other institutions and may not be photocopied or reproduced.

Acquisition information

Includes accession 2013-008 (Charles Trinkaus). Other items are either reproductions from other collections originally collected for an exhibit on Wyncie King in the Sarah Lawrence College Archives or were already in the collection.

Existence and Location of Originals note

Oversize Joseph Campbell reproduction is owned by the Filson Historical Society where the original resides. Both the Stephen Spender and Horace Gregory reproductions are owned by the Bryn Mawr College Special Collections where the originals reside.

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Biographical note

Wyncie King, was one of the foremost illustrators and cartoonists from the “Golden Age” of caricature artists, throughout the 1910s and 1920s. In his multiple decade career King’s works appeared in some of the premiere newspapers and magazines, like the Saturday Evening Post, Life, and The New York Times. In addition, his art was exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the Louisville Art Association, and in the Archives of American Art in Detroit.

King, born in 1884 in Covington, Georgia spent his childhood days in Paris, Tennessee. At age 19 King worked as a weighmaster for the Louisville and Nashville Railroad. During his spare time it was said, King would draw his co-workers in-between his job. In 1905, he took his sketches to The Nashville Banner and Nashville Daily News and was hired as a cartoonist. King left Nashville in 1910, to take a job as an editorial cartoonist and caricaturist for The Louisville Courier-Journal. In 1911, he became the featured cartoonist for The Louisville Herald where he would work for the next ten years.

While at the Herald, he met his future wife, Hortense Flexner, a fellow reporter, author, and poet. She earned degrees from Bryn Mawr, and the University of Michigan and also taught at Sarah Lawrence College and Bryn Mawr.

During King’s time in Louisville he completed sketches for the Filson Club of Louisville. He garnered national attention for his work, which led to a job at the Philadelphia Public Ledger in 1921. His caricatures of popular local citizens would appear on the editorial pages for the next year. While in Philadelphia King became immersed in the art society, completed water-color caricatures of members of the Franklin Inn Club, some of which are still displayed today. A series of work reviewed by critics was hailed, “The finest work in caricature ever done in this country” according to the Saturday Evening Post.

In 1925, King became a regular contributor to the Post, joining another famed illustrator, Norman Rockwell. The Post printed in 1935 that readers enjoyed King’s “curious eyes, which is like a camera endowed with imagination and an irrepressible sense of humor.”

By the 1940’s, King’s eye sight started to fail but he still managed to illustrate a few of his wife’s children’s books, including Chipper (1941), Wishing Window (1942), and Puzzle Pond (1948).

King was also known to keep in contact with distant friends by sending sketches of cartoons and caricatures on the envelopes instead of writing letters. Over the years many of his friends had collected the envelopes and would later keep them for the book Wyncie King: A Collection of Drawings, Sketches, and Caricatures (1967).

In his later years his health started failing and he retired to Chapel Hill, North Carolina and maintained a summer house on Sutton Island in Maine. King later succumbed to a heart attack in 1961, while traveling in Athens.

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Scope and Contents note

This collection was artificially created by the Sarah Lawrence College Archives in 2013 to gather all Wyncie King materials in one location. A few items in the collection are only reproductions of originals housed in either the Filson Historical Society or the Bryn Mawr College Special Collections.

In 2007, the SLC Archives created an exhibit of Wyncie King's drawings. Of note in the collection is the Charles Trinkaus drawing which was originally given to Cynthia Brants '45 by Wyncie King. A photocopy of a letter to her mother from the Cynthia Brants Estate accompanies the caricature for context. In addition, the Constance Warren caricature has a "hidden" message in her suit reading "Warning. Keep Away. Danger. You will be bored."

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Related Materials

See Also

For additional information on Wyncie King, see Hortense Flexner King's faculty file in the Sarah Lawrence College Archives. The SLC Archives also houses "A collection of drawings, illustrations and caricatures" by Wyncie King in the book collection. Lastly, see the following articles in the Sarah Lawrence student newspaper on the drawings: 4/14/1943 article p.1 (“Auction Planned to Aid The Scholarship Fund”) and 4/21/1943 article p. 1 (“$365 Is Raised in Auction of Caricatures”).

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Controlled Access Headings

Genre(s)

• Caricatures

Personal Name(s)

• Bryan, Marian Knighton
• Campbell, Joseph, 1904-1987
• Gershoy, Leo, 1897-1975
• Gregory, Horace, 1898-1982
• Hart, Frederic
• Hawthorn, H. B. (Harry Bertram), 1910-2006
• Roesch, Kurt, 1905-1984
• Schuman, William, 1910-1992
• Spender, Stephen, 1909-1995
• Swinford, Jerome, d. 1976
• Taylor, Harold, 1914-1993
• Trinkaus, Charles Edward, 1911-1999
• Warren, Constance, 1880-1971

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Collection Inventory