A Jewel in the Rain
A family trip to a flea market in late spring, out in the fast-blooming countryside northwest of Toronto; I’m trolling the motley jumble of the old and forgotten, as raindrops splatter. Flipping through toppling piles of moldy old books (their ignoble end in most cases well-deserved), my eye suddenly spots and my hand leaps for a rare treasure: an assembly of Punch cartoons!
In the book (“The Best Cartoons from Punch”, Simon and Schuster, 1952), I discovered the jewel shown below, by someone whom I’d never heard of before, Douglas Lionel Mays…what a pleasure, in this age of shameless hyberbole, when the gnarliest unstructured jottings by the wet-behind-the-ears are touted as the Next Coming of Comic Art, to be reminded of what consummate craftsmanship truly is!
An image which repays prolonged study.
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Douglas Lionel Mays was my late father’s cousin. I never got to meet Douglas Lionel but would have enjoyed listening to him talk about his art and about his time with Punch. Through a cousin, I came to own one of his cartoon mock-ups.
Thanks a lot for the comment! It’s great to hear from a relative of such a great artist. Your mention of a cartoon mockup makes me wonder if it is in this same style?