A 1950's Motoring / automobile / "used car saleroom" pen and ink with blue water wash cartoon drawing by Joseph (Joe) Lee (English, 1919-1975) for The London Evening News. A Motoring / automobile / "used car saleroom" pen and ink with blue water wash cartoon drawing on art board by Joseph (Joe) Lee (English, 1919-1975) for The London Evening News. Titled / Captioned "Parkin? Worse than that ... the rascals have started ABANDONING 'em now!" Signed bottom middle "LEE" and dated "15-1-53". English, 1953. Joseph (Joe) Lee was a Yorkshire-born cartoonist. He learnt his skill via Percy Bradshaw’s Press Art School correspondence course.
When he was unable to finance his training as an architect at the Royal College of Art, he turned to illustration instead. After producing his first cartoon for The Bystander in 1920 he developed quickly as a freelance artist and by 1921 was described by the Strand Magazine as ‘the youngest of the men of his craft who have now an established reputation’
During the mid-1930s, Lee contributed to a variety of periodicals, and created the hugely popular ‘London Laughs’ series for the Evening News (1934-66) which has been credited as the first run of non-political topical cartoons in the UK. After almost 9000 cartoons – the longest running daily cartoonist in history he retired to Norwich in July 1966 but continued to produce political cartoons three days a week for the local Eastern Daily Press and work for comics.
In 1963 he was presented with an award for Special Services to Cartooning by the Cartoonists’ Club of Great Britain.
Today his work can e seen in the Victoria & Albert Museum.
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