Kate Carew Americas First Great Woman Cartoonist

Kate Carew was America’s first great woman cartoonist, drawing for newspapers in the first two decades of the 20th century. She drew Sunday color comics and also interviewed and sketched many of the celebrities of her time including the Wright brothers, Pablo Picasso, champion heavyweight boxer Jack Johnson and the leading figures of the suffragette movement in the years before women won the right to vote. Her most endearing achievement was her cartoon alter ego “Aunt Kate,” whom she sketched into the proceedings, turning graphic reportage into her personal adventure from San Francisco and New York to London and Paris.