Louis Dalrymple

“He is insane. Probably hopelessly.”

Louis Dalrymple was born on January 19, 1866, in Cambridge, Illinois. After studying at the (now defunct) Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (PAFA), Dalrymple moved to New York City to pursue a career in illustration.

Side note: In 2024, PAFA’s President, Eric Pryor, cited “rising costs, expanding requirements, and dwindling enrollment” as reasons why he and PAFA’s board chose to end its degree-earning program. It seems to me that Pryor and his team could have done a better job at managing their finances, meeting the “expanding” requirements, and increasing enrollment through effective and sustained promotion. I digress.

Dalrymple, who was referred to by the press as “one of the handsomest men in New York,” soon found himself creating caricatures for Puck, Judge, and other periodicals. By 1885, the nineteen year-old Dalrymple was working as the chief cartoonist for The Daily Graphic.

The Daily Graphic, by the way, was the first newspaper in America that included illustrations on—you guessed it—a daily basis. It shuttered just four years after Dalrymple joined.