Walter Hugh McDougall was born in
Newark, New Jersey, the son of
John Alexander McDougall (1810–1894), a painter and close associate of writers such as
Edgar Allan Poe and
Washington Irving. Walt attended a military academy, and from the age of 16 was self-educated. He began his professional work in 1876 with the New York
Daily Graphic, which three years earlier had become the nation's first illustrated daily newspaper. He also sold early works to ''
Harper's Weekly and Puck. For a time he was part owner of the Newark newspaper The Suburban''. He married Mary F. Burns in 1878. He began working for the
New York World in 1884, and a cartoon printed on August 10 of that year became the
World's first political cartoon. Several of his cartoons were influential in the
1884 presidential election. One, likening nominee
James G. Blaine's dinner with millionaires and plutocrats shortly before the election to
Belshazzar's feast of the Bible, is credited with contributing to Blaine's narrow loss to
Grover Cleveland. The cartoon, entitled "The Royal Feast of Belshazzar Blaine and the Money Kings" and co-drawn by
Valerian Gribayedoff, was reprinted on billboards across New York and Blaine lost the state, and thus the election, by little over 1,000 votes. Author Michael R. Smith writes McDougall and Gribayedoff "may have created the most influential political cartoon in United States history." "Belshazzar Blaine and the Money Kings" elevated the prominence of political cartoons, which soon after became a regular feature in daily newspapers nationwide. McDougall is sometimes credited with the first color cartoon in an American newspaper: a May 21, 1893, cartoon on the cover to the
World's first color Sunday comic supplement. However, the first color cartoon has also been attributed to an April 2, 1893, George Turner cartoon in the
New York Recorder. McDougall, in collaboration with Mark Fenderson, is also credited with the first American color comic strip: "The Unfortunate Fate of a Well-Intentioned Dog", which first appeared in the
World on February 4, 1894. He illustrated the popular newspaper column of humorist
Bill Nye for many years, and has thus been called the first
syndicated cartoonist. While his caricature of Nye was widely recognized, it was reportedly disliked by Nye himself. He illustrated the comic strip
Queer Visitors from the Marvelous Land of Oz (1904–1905), written by
L. Frank Baum, as well as his own novel
The Hidden City (1891) and story books such as
Comic Animals (1890) and
The Rambillicus Book (1903). His comic strips included
Fatty Felix, Hank the Hermit,
Absent-Mined Abner, and ''
Peck's Bad Boy''. Another noted political cartoon appeared in Philadelphia's
The North American in 1903: when Pennsylvania Governor
Samuel W. Pennypacker—long mocked by cartoonists as a parrot—championed
a libel bill banning the portrayal of politicians as animals, McDougall caricatured Pennypacker and his supporters as a tree, beer stein, potato, turnip, squash, and chestnut burr. McDougall released an autobiography,
This is the Life!, in 1926, and died from a self-inflicted gunshot at his home in
Waterford, Connecticut, on March 6, 1938, at the age of 80. ==Works==