Lot 1191: GRUELLE, JOHNNY. 1880-1938.- Mr. Twee Deedle, pen and ink on Bristol board in 2 pieces, 337 x 545 mm each, signed lower right "Johnny Gruelle,"

Mr. Twee Deedle, pen and ink on Bristol board in 2 pieces, 337 x 545 mm each, signed lower right "Johnny Gruelle," some soiling and discoloring with marginal pin-pricks, newspaper's printed copyright notice attached. Provenance : Alfred B. Hunt. WITH: Finished color printer's proof of same episode, 495 x 492 mm, marginal tears, damp-stain to upper edge, image not affected. Published : Full page cartoon for the Sunday "Comic Section," The New York Herald , December 31, 1911. Best remembered as the creator of Raggedy Ann and Andy, Johnny Gruelle first came into national prominence as a comic strip artist. In 1911, when William Randolph Hearst hired Winsor McCay to work for him at the New York American, the New York Herald sponsored a contest to find a Sunday comic page to replace McCay's magnificent "Little Nemo in Slumberland." Indianapolis cartoonist John B. Gruelle reportedly beat out the other 1,500 contestants for the first prize of $2,000 with his full page fairy tale "Mr. Twee Deedle." The idea of the strip came from Gruelle's daughter Marcella who told her father about the little fairy whom their neighbor Gutzon Borglum, the sculptor of Mount Rushmore, said lived in an old apple tree in his backyard. The prototype for Raggedy Ann was the rag doll that a little girl carried with her on her adventures with Mr. Twee Deedle in fairyland.