In 1941, the syndicated cartoonist Denys Wortman moved to the Vineyard with his wife, Hilda, and 3-year-old son, also named Denys. At the time, Wortman’s strip was published every day, except for Sundays, in newspapers around the country. They were single-frame cartoons, like New Yorker cartoons. But unlike the minimalist drawings popular today, Wortman created intricate scenes. His work was highly detailed. He used charcoal, pencil, and grease crayon for his drawings, and captured the desperation of the times with poignancy, wit, and empathy.
“When you think of cartoons, I think you usually think of funnies,” said his son. “You wouldn’t think of Dad’s as funnies. It was life.”
Wortman started off as a fine arts painter before moving into cartooning. His son explained, “He always had trouble finishing a painting, and cartooning was a beautiful thing because it had to be done by the end of the day.” Then after retiring from doing his strip, in 1954, he started painting seriously again.
Wortman died in 1958 at the age of 71. His son, Denys, now 88, has been making sure his father’s artistic legacy lives on, and a small but extraordinary exhibit of some of Wortman’s cartoons, paintings, home movies, and archival materials can be seen at the M.V. Museum through Feb. 21.
I recently had an opportunity to talk with Denys about his father’s work and the show at the museum. Below are edited selections from our conversation.
Kate Feiffer: Denys, you have worked for decades to keep your father’s artistic legacy alive.
Denys Wortman: Basically for my whole life, in one way or another.
KF: What’s been driving you to do that?
DW: My father had such a wonderful life, and did so much artwork that covered history all through the ’20s, ’30s, ’40s and into the ’50s. I think it’s very important that that is saved so it can be appreciated by folks in the future, and if I don’t get it done, who will?
KF: Your dad was syndicated in papers across the country. How did that work?
DW: Everything was sent to the New York World (later the New York World Telegram and Sun), and then they would send it to United Features, the syndicator. And it would go out across the country.
KF: Why did your family move to the Vineyard?
DW: In 1939 Dad suffered a massive heart attack. He got through it, but his doctor told him two things: You’re never to have another cigarette, and you’ve got to change your lifestyle and get somewhere where you can get some exercise and relax. The war [WWII] was also brewing, and Dad thought if we moved to the Vineyard we’d be safer and more self-sufficient, and that’s why we moved here in 1941. My folks had bought a place in Chilmark in 1933, so we had a place to come. Then we rented a house in Vineyard Haven in the winter, because the Chilmark place wasn’t heated.
KF: And how did he manage to keep doing the cartoons from the Island?
DW: Every Monday morning my mom would be at the Post Office and mail six cartoons down to New York.
KF: It’s well-known that Thomas Hart Benton painted a portrait of your father and your father painted a portrait of Benton. How did that come about?
DW: Tom Benton and dad were old buds, and Tom said, “I’d like to paint your portrait.” Well, Dad felt quite honored. As he sat there he would stare back at Tom and do some sketching, and then it evolved into those two paintings. Then somebody from Collier’s magazine heard about it, and wrote this story called “The Battle of Beetlebung Corner.”
KF: There’s a painting in the show that has a number of women set up with painting easels in a fishing village that looks a lot like, but not totally like, Menemsha. You said this was the final painting he did before he died. Do you know who these people are?
DW: Well, my mom posed for all of them. Mom posed for Dad often. She was his best model. Dad did a cartoon that’s very similar to this, and I think he did the painting after he did the cartoon.
“The Two Worlds of Denys Wortman,” at the M.V. Museum, mvmuseum.org.
