Clare Dwiggins - School Days - May 16 1921

I always find the nostalgia of a long-ago time for an even longer-ago time charming, and by the 1920s, it provided subject matter for a thriving sub-genre of newspaper cartoons. In 1921, at least some newspaper reading Americans were wistful about the rural past of their childhoods.

Clare Dwiggins (1874-1958) was a successful practitioner of this "good old days" genre. One of his strips was called "Them Was the Happy Days," another "Footprints in the Sands of Time" (referenced in this example), and he had a long-running strip based on Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn. "School Days" ran from 1909-1932, under a few different titles.

I appreciate the looseness and spontanaeity of the work, his meaty brushwork in the tree and figures in the foreground contrasting with the quick pen strokes that describe the little cottage to the right.