Ralph Waldo Emerson Barton was a popular American cartoonist and caricaturist of actors and other celebrities.
13 Facts About Ralph Barton
2.
Ralph Barton's work was in heavy demand through the 1920s and has been considered to epitomize the era, but his personal life was troubled by mental illness.
3.
Ralph Barton was the youngest of four children born to Abraham Pool and Catherine Josephine Barton.
4.
Ralph Barton's father was an attorney by profession, but around the time of Ralph's birth made a career change to publish journals on metaphysics.
5.
The young Ralph Barton showed his mother's aptitude for art, and by the time he was in his mid-teens he had already seen several of his cartoons and illustrations published in The Kansas City Star and the Kansas City Journal-Post.
6.
Encouraged, the Bartons moved to New York City, where Ralph found steady work with Puck, McCall's and other publications.
7.
Ralph Barton's wife was not happy with life in the Big Apple and returned to Kansas City within a few months.
8.
Ralph Barton rented studio space, which he shared with another famous Missouri artist, Thomas Hart Benton, and the two became fast friends.
9.
At the height of his popularity, Ralph Barton enjoyed not only the acquaintance of the famous, but a solid and impressive income.
10.
Ralph Barton was beset by manic-depressive disorder, and each of his four marriages ended in divorce.
11.
On May 19,1931, in his East Midtown Manhattan penthouse apartment, Ralph Barton shot himself through the right temple.
12.
Ralph Barton's suicide note said he had irrevocably "lost the only woman I ever loved", and that he feared his worsening manic-depression was approaching insanity.
13.
Ralph Barton's ashes were returned to his native Kansas City and interred in Mount Moriah Cemetery.