Thank you, Monster Brains for posting a HUGE collection of Walter McDougall illustrations (click to enlarge).
McDougall was a prolific newspaper illustrator in the late 1800’s. His work is sublimely imaginative and bizarre, dancing on the border of surrealist children’s fiction…and nightmares. The captions are brilliant.

I confess, I saved all 86 images in the post because I plan to read them like bedtime stories. Each image is a vignette unto itself, often with a single sentence presenting a strange predicament and/or creature.

Somehow, these fragments coagulate into stories when I see them…hazy at first, but overflowing with possibilities.

See the collection of images HERE.



2 responses to “Walter McDougall”
The glory days of print newspapers, so sadly gone…what paper would support such whimsy now? Maybe a magazine like The New Yorker with their cartoons, but a much more limited audience than most newspapers reached.
Yes, and the viral memes of present day (that millions see) don’t come close to this quality or complexity!