Ed Payne, "Billy the Boy Artist," Sunday strip (1946?)

This strip has a very yellowed vellum overlay that was used as a color guide -- faint colors still visible: a little hard to photograph it without the vellum overlay, but i did my best (see additional images).

"Billy the Boy Artist" was a Boston Globe strip about a boy whose realistic painting talents fooled people, leading to various mischief. This Sunday features a pretty convoluted gag, as two men are after Billy for some reason, and he foils them by painting realistic insects, causing his father to spray insecticide thru the keyhole that men are peeking through!!

Ed Payne was born in Vermont in May, 1870, but spent his life in the Boston area, living in Cambridge, Belmont, Arlington and Boston. "Billy, the Boy Artist," first appeared in the Boston Globe in 1899, and ran until Payne's death in 1955. At 55+ years, this is longer than Schultz' run on Peanuts, and may very well be longest run of any comic strip by a single creator.

I have the date of this example as 1946 (not indicated on the strip itself, so I must have been told this when I bought it, which was back in 2003 on ebay). If so, it looks pretty old-fashioned; Payne's style didn't change much over the years, I guess.