Page:Cartoons by Bradley.djvu/31



HOUGH the word "cartoon," as used to designate certain kinds of satirical drawings, has strayed far from its original meaning, it has achieved in its present uses an adequate definition which the public profitably may bear in mind. That effective instrument of the artist turned satirist, "must always figure," according to an authority, "as a leading article transformed into a picture." It is, in short, an editorial expressed in line. By this rule, then, should be judged the cartoon, properly so called. By this rule the work of Bradley's brain and pen invariably measures true.

To the writer, whose privilege it has been for more than twenty years to confer almost daily with some cartoonist of proved ability or of excellent promise while the latter was developing the idea which was to take pictorial form under his skillful hand a few hours later, it is a pleasure to record here the belief that, like Abou Ben Adhem, the successful producer of cartoons loves his fellow men. It follows that he is continually seeking for truth and not in the mood of jesting Pilate. This may serve to explain why the older term "caricature," which sufficed to describe, for example, the tremendously effective brutalities of Gillray and Rowlandson in Napoleon's day, cannot be applied with entire propriety to the work of enlightened and conscientious artists of the present, who make pictures which are leading articles. Truth if caricatured becomes a lie. In the successful cartoon everything may be distorted except the truth.

Bradley had a high respect for his art and for his position as a teacher through his art. He was a student of cartooning, historically and otherwise. It was a source of satisfaction to him that as an American cartoonist he had among his predecessors men of such strong convictions as Paul Revere, Thomas Nast and Joseph Keppler. He had no patience with milk-and-watery cartoons. Whatever came from his pen had to deliver a message of no uncertain kind. Any idea which could not prove itself worth while when roughly sketched out in half a dozen pencil strokes was