1. Ralph Waldo Emerson Barton was a popular American cartoonist and caricaturist of actors and other celebrities.
15 Facts About Ralph Barton
1. 2.
Ralph Barton's work was in heavy demand through the 1920s and has been considered to epitomize the era.
3.
Ralph Barton was born in Kansas City, Missouri on August 14,1891, the youngest of Abraham Pool and Catherine Josephine Barton's four children.
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 there and returned to Kansas City within a few months.
8.
Ralph Barton rented studio space in New York, which he shared with another famous Missouri artist, Thomas Hart Benton, and the two became fast friends.
9.
Ralph Barton illustrated books as well, including Anita Loos's hugely popular Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.
10.
One of Barton's popular caricatures was "A Tuesday Night at the Cocoanut Grove in Los Angeles As Imagined by a Noted American Artist, Ralph Barton", which was published in the June 1927 issue of Vanity Fair.
11.
At the height of his popularity, Ralph Barton enjoyed not only the acquaintance of the famous, but a solid and impressive income.
12.
Ralph Barton's fourth wife was the French composer Germaine Tailleferre who was a member of Les Six.
13.
On May 19,1931, in his East Midtown Manhattan penthouse apartment, Ralph Barton shot himself through the right temple.
14.
Ralph Barton's suicide note said he had irrevocably "lost the only woman I ever loved", and that he feared his worsening bipolar disorder was approaching insanity.
15.
Ralph Barton's ashes were returned to his native Kansas City and interred in Mount Moriah Cemetery.