Resurrecting Ralph Barton

August 14 was the birthday of the popular Jazz Age cartoonist, illustrator and caricaturist Ralph Barton (Ralph Waldo Emerson Barton, 1891-1931).

Though I’m sure I’d encountered his work in the past, my current interest in the artist stems from the fact that he illustrated the original printed edition of Anita Loos’s Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1925) and its sequel But Gentlemen Marry Brunettes (1927). He was one of the original staff (and a shareholder) of The New Yorker, and also contributed to magazines like Vanity Fair, Puck, McCall’s, Judge, Collier’s, Harper’s Bazaar, et al.

Barton was also good friends with Charlie Chaplin. On a whim I just googled their names as a pair, and up popped numerous photos of them together, some posed, some candid, indicating that they hung out together quite a bit at least for a time. It was at Chaplin’s instigation that Barton made a short silent film inspired by Camille in 1926, featuring such well-known personalities as Ethel Barrymore, Sinclair Lewis, and Paul Robeson. Barton also dabbled in Broadway design. His scenic curtain for Chauve-Souris (1922) depicted an auditorium full of theatre-goers staring back at the audience. He also did the sets for the W.C. Fields vehicle Poppy (1923).

Based on his full given name it shouldn’t be a total shock to learn that Barton’s father, an attorney by training, published works of metaphysical philosophy. His mother maintained an art studio and painted portraiture. The family lived in Kansas City; Barton drew cartoons and illustrations for local newspapers as a teenager. For a brief time, he tried his luck in Chicago and studied at the Art Institute, but the city wasn’t to his liking. He moved to New York in 1912, initially sharing a studio with none other than Thomas Hart Benton.

There is a lightness to Barton’s style that is almost feminine and shows the clear influence of Aubrey Beardsley, full of flowing, sleek lines that spoke to the Jazz Age sensibility. His figures tend to be thin and lithe, the male figures are fey. Here’s a cartoon depicting Flo Ziegfeld as a magician of the stage:

Barton’s Jazz Age ascendency may be partially at fault for the turning of the tide during the Depression. His 1929 book God’s Country did not sell well. But there was more to his descent than this. Most modern commentors speculate that he was bi-polar. His manic phases made him sexually promiscuous. He was married and divorced four times, largely on account of his rampant infidelity. His third wife Carlotta Monterey, whom he considered the love of his life, and is not to be confused with Fields’ paramour Carlotta Monti, later went on to marry Eugene O’Neill. His fourth wife was French composer Germaine Tailleferre, the only female member of Les Six.

In 1931, Chaplin tried to shake Barton out of his funk by bringing him with him on his famous tour of Europe. Barton only got as far as London, then freaked out, and wouldn’t leave the hotel room. He returned to his New York penthouse, where he fatally shot himself through the temple. He was not yet 40 years old.

Barton caricatured most of the major celebrities of his time. If he lived and kept at it for decades he might have proved to have had the kind of staying power Al Hirschfeld did. Instead, he was quickly left behind by the March of Time as the Depression, World War Two, the Cold War, and all that followed made the teens and twenties a distant memory.