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An Early History of Newspaper Illustration and Cartooning

Published: November 27, 2025 1 minute 12 comments
San Francisco Chronicle headline about The Chronicle’s Exhibition of Newspaper Art

Illustrating the Progress of Art in Journalism (1897)

It started a few days ago when Tony Rose uncovered a startling item in an old Editor and Publisher.

Editor and Publisher, March 21, 1925

A 1925 obituary for Albert Wilbur Steele includes a claim that he was “the first American cartoonist to draw a daily cartoon for a newspaper.” Steele, who had worked on The Rocky Mountain News earlier, signed on to The Denver Post in 1897 which is where he supposedly drew a front page, above the fold cartoon every day for nearly 30 years. An American first. (Denver Post archives are seemingly available only in the Denver Public Library Main Branch.)

credit: most of the above is through the graces of The Platinum Age Comics usenet group with special thanks to Leonard Rifas (Steele’s Colorado Encyclopedia biography), Karen Green (1899 Denver Post cartoon by Steele), and Mike Rhode (Denver Library page and Tony Rose’s original E&P post).

That of course led me, like the others, down the rabbit hole search for Albert Wilbur Steele. Which ended, for me, when, at newspapers.com, I stumbled across the February 24, 1897 San Francisco Chronicle that featured six full broadsheet pages on the history of newspaper illustration in the United States up to that time, with success coming when lithography was introduced to newspaper production.

It must be one of the earliest recorded histories of American newspaper art, illustration and cartooning.

San Francisco Chronicle, February 24, 1897

The section, in conjunction with an exhibition of newspaper art (Hearst not included), then included reports from papers across the country on their efforts to introduce illustration.

New York Herald artists as seen by Theodore Langguth (1897)
illustration of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle Art and Engraving Department 1890s

And so it goes with The Detroit Evening News, The Rocky Mountain News, The Philadelphia Public Ledger, The Salt Lake Tribune, The Medford (MA) Evening Standard, and The Los Angeles Times.

The cartoonists name-checked are a who’s who of classic cartoonists: Clifford K. Berryman, Tom Powers, Will Crawford, William O. Wilson, Albert L. Levering, Fred Leipziger, Will E. Chapin, John T. McCutcheon, Carlisle Martin, George B. Luks, Walt McDougall. Louis Biederman[n], Everett E. Lowry, and dozens more.

The six pages are copiously illustrated with the help of The San Francisco Chronicle’s own art bullpen.

San Francisco art staff: Solly Walter, George Elmer Lyon, Theodore Langguth, Ernest Comstock Jenner, Frank Berry Standish, Blendon R, Campbell, Arthur Monroe Lewis, Virgil Theodore Nahl. (Feb. 27, 1897)

The very large newspaper broadsheets of 1897 will not be legible at the size posted here, but will be on our Facebook page where they can be supersized.

San Francisco Chronicle February 24, 1897 page one
San Francisco Chronicle February 24, 1897 page two
San Francisco Chronicle February 24, 1897 page three
San Francisco Chronicle February 24, 1897 page four
San Francisco Chronicle February 24, 1897 page five
San Francisco Chronicle February 24, 1897 page six

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Comments 12

  1. thanks for the history. a century after that in the 150k circ. daily i labored 30+ yrs for, there were 3.5 of us newroom artists cartooning, ilustrating and map-makng, a full-time editorial cartoonist and several more artist/designers in the ad dept. all gone now. the paper is now mostly on-line, print circ. 25k and falling. the last artist was laid off in 2014. BTW, the production illustration above looks pretty much like one i did in the ’00s!

  2. Although i go by a pseudonym here, I was a staff illustrator/ cartoonist nearly 100 years later at both the old San Francisco Examiner (the afternoon daily) and a regular contributor to the San Francisco Chronicle, right around the cusp of the move to digitalization at the papers. In fact a part of my hiring at the Examiner was the request that I transition to doing my illos electronically so as to make them part of an overall seamless process…

  3. Wow! This is fascinating stuff. Thanks so much for this.

  4. Nice work, DD.

    Tony is compiling old stories from E&P for our Comics Research Bibliography. You can see his finds each day in two places:

    Comics Research Bibliography daily at ComicsDC
    https://comicsdc.blogspot.com/search?q=%22Comics+research+bibliography%22&max-results=20&by-date=true

    Comics Research Bibliography FB page
    https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61555263475365

    and then we do an annual compilation (which includes many stories from here).

    Comics Research Bibliography 2024 E-book Edition
    https://archive.org/details/crb-2024

    2025’s cumulative edition is at 1700 pages right now.

  5. Fascinating. Thank you for posting this informative, one could say delicious, bite of cartoon of history.
    Ahh, the old style pen & ink art those pioneers created is still fresh as a daisy, human as error and inviting as a free ticket.
    Oh, if only there were a NEMO Magazine to further make this research widely available!
    I have recently been thinking about Etruscan and ancient Greek pottery. When seen in mass, the commonness of the decorative painting become apparent offers a glimpse of our common innate human nobility. From this realization the insight forms, an apotheosis, that achievement currently is and always has been inherent in our species. These century old drawings from the dawn of a Time touch me with the same warm finger of history as the erotic pottery of a foundational civilization thousands of years gone. Their Art, our cartoons, will live on for centuries. Just imagine, in a thousand years our decedents will laugh at us. 🙂

    1. That’s excellent. Thank you, Mike.

  7. It’s kinda remarkable that Steele’s obituary refers to him as “one of the last of America’s noted editorial cartoonists.”

    1. I don’t know that Thomas Nast ever worked for a daily newspaper.

  9. Oddly enough, I picked up his 1899 book from the Los Angeles Times at an estate sale recently. I can’t find anything on it, would be glad to send pics

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