Portrait of Winsor McCay, photographed by Crobot (17 February, 1907), the file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike (accessed: May 25, 2018).
Winsor McCay
, ca 1867/71 - 1934
(Zenas) Winsor McCay was a Canadian cartoonist and animator, perceived as being “far ahead of his time” (Furniss, 2017, p. 40). It might be claimed though that his works were too “artistic” or “demanding” for his times: the animation industry in the 1910s and 1920s was developing fast and needed something more than his so called “personality animations” or the kind of art that McCay produced. He started as a cartoonist and author of many comic strips in various newspapers and magazines, which made him a celebrity (Furniss, 2017, p. 41). Then he became an animator (his first animation: Little Nemo was released in 1911); later on he suffered a similar fate to e. g. Georges Méliès, as they both “fell into relative obscurity as cinema moved into the late silent era” (Furniss 2017, p. 43).
He is best-known for animations like: Little Nemo (1911) or Gertie the Dinosaur (1914). His later works, such as The Sinking of the Lusitania, were produced in reaction to the conflicts of World War I. The present entry describes The Centaurs from 1921.
Bio prepared by Anna Mik, University of Warsaw, anna.m.mik@gmail.com
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