Art Young

Arthur Henry Young (January 14, 1866 – December 29, 1943) was an American cartoonist and writer. He is best known for his socialist cartoons, especially those drawn for the left-wing political magazine The Masses between 1911 and 1917.

Early years

Art Young was born January 14, 1866, near Orangeville, in Stephenson County, Illinois. His family moved to Monroe, Wisconsin when he was a year old. His father, Daniel S. Young, was a grocer there; his mother was Amanda Young (née Wagner). He had two brothers and one sister. His brother, Wilmer Wesley Young, studied journalism at the University of Wisconsin and founded its student newspaper, The Daily Cardinal.

Young enrolled in the Chicago Academy of Design in 1884, where he studied under J. H. Vanderpoel. His first published cartoon appeared the same year in the trade paper Nimble Nickel. Also that year, he began working for a succession of Chicago newspapers including the Evening Mail, the Daily News, and the Tribune.

In 1888, Young resumed his studies, first at the Art Students League of New York (until 1889), then at the Académie Julian in Paris (1889–90). Following a long convalescence, he joined the Chicago Inter-Ocean (1892), to which he contributed political cartoons and drawings for its Sunday color supplement.

In 1895 he married Elizabeth North. In 1895 or 1896, he worked briefly for the Denver Times; then, after his separation with North, moved again to New York City, where he sold drawings to the humor magazines Puck, Life, and Judge, and drew cartoons for William Randolph Hearst's New York Evening Journal and Sunday New York American. From 1902 to 1906, he studied rhetoric at Cooper Union to improve his skills as a cartoonist.